


Roll for Strength

by midnighteverlark



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Aged-Up Character(s), Angst and Fluff and Smut, Byeler - Freeform, Coming Out, Emmett (OC), Endgame byeler, High School, Jealous Will, M/M, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Realizations, Role reversal from usual fanon, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn, Will is a Mess, byler, guest appearances from another character - you'll see, i know not many people care about OCs but I promise this is very byeler-centered, mike is first to the queer scene, season three doesn't exist, the party, they're 17/18 in this, what season three?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2020-05-07 14:09:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19211020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnighteverlark/pseuds/midnighteverlark
Summary: Mike has been acting weird lately - making excuses, being evasive, smiling to himself when he thinks no one is looking. And the hickeys are the nail in the coffin. Will knows Mike has a new girlfriend that he hasn't told anyone about, and he's determined to dig up clues about this secret lady-love. Not because he's jealous. Will has moved on from Mike - really. He refuses to spend his whole life pining over someone who's never going to want him. He just wants to find out about this mystery girl, to make sure she's right for Mike and she's treating him well.But when Mike invites his lab partner from biology along to a party, Will is a tad distracted from his mission. Because Emmett is pretty clearly gay.(Spoiler alert: Mike isn't dating a girl.)(Note: I know not many people care about OCs (and I totally understand), but I promise this is very byeler-centered - it's much more about Mike and Will than it is about Mike's bf, and it is endgame byeler.) (Also: prompt from Tumblr. Thank you, sorry it took like a year oops!)





	1. The Lab Partner

It’s Friday. TGIF.

In the deafening buzz of the cafeteria, the Party is huddled around their usual table, excitedly planning the party they’re going to have at Hop’s cabin tonight. El hasn’t actually lived there for years, since she moved into the chief’s house, but she goes back every once in a while for peace and quiet - and sometimes, like today, she brings the Party. Cozy, secluded, and parent-less, it’s the perfect location for all manner of sacred teenage traditions. Namely, swearing, blasting music, underage drinking, laughing too hard and too loud, and generally being irresponsible hooligans. (Hey, they’re a bunch of dorks and nerds. A small party in the woods is about as hooligan-y as they get.)

They’re all atwitter with plans. Lucas keeps boasting that he’s gonna get his hands on a six pack. Dustin cackles at the phrasing and starts teasing him. Max is talking at Will about music, saying that they should bring her boombox to blast. She’s asking him about tapes, saying he should bring this or that, saying his name when he doesn’t respond. She clicks her fingers in front of his face and he turns.

“What?”

She knocks on his head. “Hello? Will?”

“Stop,” he says, warding her off. “Yeah, I’ll bring music.”

Her expression goes flat with annoyance. “Yes, we established that. The question is, _what_ music?”

“Right.” He drums his fingers on the table, thinking, doing his best to tune back into the conversation. He’s just a little distracted by the fact that Mike has a secret girlfriend that he hasn’t deigned to tell Will about.

Yeah. A secret girlfriend. Will is sure of it, now. The evidence is right there on Mike’s neck, just barely peeking out from the collar of his shirt. It’s a new one. A delicate, fresh red-purple mark that _definitely_ wasn’t there yesterday.

Mike has been acting weird lately. Being secretive. It’s been nearly a month since Will first started noticing it. First it was vagueries. He would be “busy” with mysterious plans that he didn’t bother to explain. He would vanish off the face of the earth for hours, during times when he would normally be at home doing fuck-all. He’d make excuses; be evasive. He would smile to himself for no apparent reason, off in his thoughts, and deny the expression when confronted. Will knew something was up, but the hickeys were the nail in the coffin. They started appearing a couple weeks ago, and Mike has been doing his best to cover them up... but Will noticed. And now, he’s sure about it. Mike has been dating someone. Moreover, Mike has been dating someone and _hasn’t told Will._

And frankly, it’s irksome.

God knows Mike wouldn’t shut up about El, back when they were dating. And Will told Mike all about Samantha, in eighth grade when he tried dating her as a last-ditch attempt to see if maybe he liked girls after all. (Big surprise: he didn’t.) And, granted, they aren’t in middle school anymore. They aren’t kids anymore, they’re seventeen. Practically grown adults. Mike isn’t _required_ to disclose anything about his love life to the Party. But why hide it from Will? They tell each other practically everything. Right?

Will sneaks another peek as Max chatters to him, to check if maybe his eyes were deceiving him, but no. It’s still there. A deep, round bruise, only a sliver of it visible over Mike’s collar. Undoubtedly left by a pair of soft, gloss-shiny lips. Will wonders who they belong to. He wonders if he knows her, whoever she is - if he’s been sharing a classroom with her every day without even knowing it. Then and there, he decides to investigate. Not because he’s jealous, but because he wants to see if this girl is right for Mike - if she’s good for him. Good _to_ him.

It’s no use being jealous - Will knows. He’s been through that song-and-dance. And now, more than anything, he’s just a little sad. Weary. Not looking forward to going through this again: watching Mike with someone else, seeing his innocent, nervous excitement before dates, seeing him kiss someone else. A girl. Seeing him staring after her red lips and long hair and skirts, and feeling that hollow, cold feeling in the pit of his belly.

But he’s better now - really. He’s not the moon-eyed twelve year old that he once was, following at the heels of his best friend with flushed cheeks and a fast-beating heart. He’s basically an adult now. He’s looking at colleges and developing his art and he has other things to think about. He’s moved on. Really. Well, he’s mostly moved on. Kind of. He’s trying, let’s put it that way. What else can he do? Mike is straight and Will refuses to spend his whole life moping over someone that’s never going to want him. And he’s been doing pretty well, if he does say so himself. He’s found a few other guys to pine over from a distance - and he has plans. College. Some big, progressive city, maybe. New York. San Francisco. He’s promised himself he’ll find someone there, just as soon as he can graduate and get the hell out of this small town with slurs scratched into the bathroom stalls and bullies constantly on the watch. He’ll meet some small-town guy with big dreams, just like him. And in the meantime he can keep trying to puzzle out if the mildly arrogant guy from theater is actually flirting with him or if he acts like that with everyone. Mike can have his secret girlfriend. Will doesn’t care.

He doesn’t.

He _doesn’t._

Except now he does. Because why the hell is Mike keeping it so hush-hush? What is it about her that needs to be kept secret? Who _is_ she?

He’s determined to find out. For his own sanity, if nothing else. And hey, maybe when he sees Mike with his new girlfriend, he’ll get over his best friend once and for all. Maybe that will finally convince him to let it go.

The Party groans and Will tunes back in, lifting his chin from his hand.

“He’s chill,” Mike is saying, his tone of voice just on the edge of defensive, and Dustin makes a face.

“You could have told us ahead of time,” Dustin gripes.

“I did. Just now.”

Will leans into the conversation “Wait, what?”

“Mike invited somebody along without telling us, that’s all.”

Will laser-focuses in on Mike. It can’t be that easy, can it? Mike didn’t invite his new sweetheart along to the party after weeks of secrecy, did he?

“I just did tell you,” Mike repeats. “Anyway, he’s fine. He’s a pretty chill guy. I bet you’ll like him.”

Nope. It’s a guy. Will sits back in his seat.

Lucas asks, “Who is it?” through a bite of sandwich, and Mike picks at his own food with his head down.

“Just my lab partner from biology. He just moved here like three months ago. Guy could use some friends.”

Will turns back to Max. Right. Party. Music. Focus, Will.

* * *

 Will has been trying to subtly gather information all day, without much success. He kept an eye on Mike during their shared classes, seeing if he would slip up and send a conspiratorial smile towards a girl across the room. He asked about Mike’s plans for the weekend, teasingly asking if Mike had a hot date - and was rewarded with only a laugh and an elbow to the ribs. He even went so far as to ask El if she knew who Mike has been seeing lately. She just shrugged and said, “He’s been seeing someone?”

Will has no clues. No leads. No information whatsoever, except for a strong hunch and that damn hickey.

Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

And now it’s the end of the school day, the bell is ringing, and Will is getting a little frustrated.

He catches Mike by his locker, intentionally slamming into him in greeting. Mike stumbles, flips him off, and then grins.

“Hey.”

“Hey. You’re coming in the carpool, right?”

The Party is heading to the Sinclairs’ house for pre-celebration preparations. Lucas will be driving them in the long-suffering van that he shares with his parents. It’s not exactly a Delorean, but it runs. And, as a bonus, it fits the whole Party without anyone having to ride in someone else’s lap. But Mike shakes his head, piling textbooks into his locker.

“No, I was actually gonna give Emmett a ride.”

Will blinks. “Emmett?”

“Lab partner. Bio.” Mike’s shoulders twitch, like he was about to shrug but didn’t quite manage the gesture, and Will’s eyes narrow. “I said at lunch. I invited him ‘cause he doesn’t really know anyone and -” Mike trails off with a vague gesture, and Will nods, playing along. “We were gonna just take my mom’s car and meet you guys later.”

“Right. Cool. So, we’ll see you there, then?”

Of course. Because Mike totally needs to “give his lab partner a ride.” They couldn’t possibly have carpooled with the rest of the Party. It’s totally not because he needs an excuse to disappear after school and spend a few hours with Miss Mystery. Okay, Mike. Sure.

Not that it’s completely unheard of to bring someone along to a Party get-together. Every once in a blue moon, someone will invite An Outsider along to something. A friend from outside the group, or a cousin visiting town, or the occasional unfortunate date - _unfortunate_ because then they have to survive the Party. So, no, it’s not unheard of. But it is rare. And in this case, Will isn’t buying it for a second. Oh, he believes that Mike invited the guy as a gesture of kindness - but he does _not_ need several whole hours just to give somebody a lift.

For a moment, Will considers confronting him then and there. But then Mike is slamming his locker shut and taking the first steps down the hallway, and the moment passes.

“See you there!” Mike calls over his shoulder, and Will makes himself turn away. He’s not going to watch Mike skip off merrily to spend time with his lady-love.

God, this is stupid. He feels like he’s about thirteen again, listening to his best friend gush about the mysterious girl with superpowers and a number for a name. He’s being dumb; maybe he was wrong. Maybe Mike isn’t dating anyone, after all. But the hickeys have been a fairly regular thing, it seems, and Mike doesn’t seem like the type to have a lot of flings...

“Will!”

He looks up when he hears his name, surfacing from his thoughts. Dustin is flagging him down from across the hallway, wading through the crush of humanity with a grin on his face.

“You ready for this? This is gonna be like the best night ever.”

“For sure,” Will agrees, quickly catching Dustin’s contagious enthusiasm. By the time they drift towards the parking lot and meet up with the rest of the Party, sans Mike, Will’s mind is on board games, junk food, music and glow sticks - all essential items to gather before they head to the cabin.

* * *

 Will leans against the table halfway between the living room and the mini-kitchen, taking tiny sips of beer and hating the bitter taste, but not wanting to admit it. He’s not used to alcohol. He can’t take big swallows without his whole face twisting up comically, and Max and Lucas will never stop giving him shit for it if that happens. So he’s been taking small sips, and interspersing them with bites of the pizza they brought along, and trying not to watch the front door. They’ve been here for an hour already, and Mike is still MIA.

“Okay, fuck, marry, kill,” Dustin is saying, his socked feet swinging where he perches on the back of the sofa. “Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Fisher, and Mia Sara.”

Lucas chews on his pizza, gaze lifted to the ceiling, considering. “Fuck Carrie Fisher - wait, no. _Marry_ Carrie Fisher, fuck Sigourney Weaver... kill Mia Sara.”

They both look at Will for his input, and he rattles off, “Fuck Mia Sara, marry Sigourney Weaver, kill Carrie Fisher,” choosing at random.

Dustin kicks his feet against the back of the sofa. “That was quick.”

“I mean, it seems pretty obvious,” Will deflects, and they both nod along sagely like he said something incredibly wise.

El pipes up from where she’s sitting on the floor, playing a card game with Max. “Why not fuck, marry, and kill all of them and become a rich widow?”

Max rolls her eyes as she sorts through her hand of cards. “You watch way too many soap operas, Ellie.”

Max’s cards fly from her hands in a small explosion of hearts, spades, and queens, and El delicately plucks a tissue from the coffee table, dabbing at her nose as Max flips her off and starts to gather them.

It’s a good party. Lucas managed to snag two six packs of cheap, bitter beer. They picked up pizza on the way here. Dustin has been blowing up a lot of colorful balloons. Without helium they just kind of bop around on the floor, getting underfoot, but the effect is festive nonetheless. Max brought glow sticks and distributed them around the cabin, despite it not being dark yet; she insists that the effect will be great later, when they turn off all the lights and play the horror movies they rented from the new Blockbuster. Music blasts from the boombox, and they have to half-yell to hear each other over the beat - but that’s the great thing about the cabin. No uptight neighbors to complain about the noise. There’s a stack of board games on the table, but except for El and Max playing cards, they haven’t gotten around to the games yet. They’ve been entertaining themselves well enough just with food and music and laughing way too hard at inside jokes. Plus, Mike isn’t here yet, and it would seem rude to start any real activities without him. _And_ they’re waiting for the snacks that Mike is supposed to be bringing.

Will can’t help but be a little on edge, waiting. Because he just _knows_ that every minute that passes is another minute Mike spent probably pressed up against a soft pair of breasts, maybe even collecting one more mark on his neck, and - no. Will reminds himself to cut that out. It’s no use being jealous. He keeps repeating that to himself. He’s not jealous. He’s not jealous. There’s absolutely no use being jealous of some girl.

And, see, usually he’s not. He’s well on his way to getting over his childhood best friend. It’s just this new girl that threw a wrench in things. It’s driving Will up the wall that he doesn’t even know her name or what she looks like.

Like hounds picking up on a scent, Will and El both turn towards the front door. There’s a low rumble, just now audible over the music. The crunch of gravel and dirt under tires. An engine.

“Mike’s here,” El announces, and Lucas hoots, “Food!”

The engine cuts, and two car doors slam. That’s right; the lab partner. Will forgot he was coming, too. What did Mike say his name was? A-something? E-something?

A few moments later, footsteps _clonk_ up the porch. The handle turns and Mike bursts in with his arms full of snacks, hollering out merrily to the Party - and then Will’s beer can smacks onto the table much harder than he meant it to, his eyes locked on the boy that follows Mike inside.

He takes in everything in a flash. The platinum bleached-blonde hair coiffed back from his forehead, the chipped black polish on his short nails, the black leather jacket, the beat-up band tee, the old ripped jeans, the slim silver piercings glinting at the left corner of his lip and the opposite dark eyebrow, and -

No way. Wait. Shit. Is that a rainbow pin half-hidden under the lapel of his jacket? Is that a _pride_ pin, or just a rainbow for aesthetics’ sake?

Mike dumps the candy and snacks on the counter and then turns back, going to stand next to The Guy and sweeping an arm at the Party. “Emmett, everyone. Everyone, Emmett.”

He’s greeted with a scattered collection of _hey_ s and he half-lifts one hand in a kind of timid wave. Will, meanwhile, is playing the delicate game of intense-observation-disguised-as-casual-glances.

Mike begins pointing at each person one by one, speaking over the music. “That’s Max. El. The guy perched on the back of the couch like a gargoyle is Dustin. Lucas. And this is Will.”

At the very last second Will realizes that’s him, and does something approximating a smile. The expression must be at least somewhat recognizable, because Emmett flashes him a curve of straight, white teeth in return, and Will has to look down at the wood floor with his heart squeezing in his chest.

When he looks up again, Emmett is shrugging off his jacket, leaving it crumpled on a chair near the door while Mike starts playing host.

“Pizza’s in the kitchen, bathroom is over there,” Mike says, pointing them out, and then turns to Dustin and Max. “There’s still pizza, right?”

“No, we ate it all,” Max says, and Mike ignores her as he goes to grab a plate. Emmett follows him, drifting along at Mike’s heels - the typical image of somebody at a party where they only know one person. Will’s gaze cuts to the other Party members, wondering if they saw the pin too. Searching for critical or hostile expressions. He can’t tell if anyone else noticed it or not; Max and El seem pretty neutral, Lucas looks at best passively curious, and Dustin - ever the extrovert of the group - has put on a cheerful face to go introduce himself with a fist bump.

They unpack the snacks that Mike brought, and the party starts for real. They start to mix and mingle, pairs and triads forming and disintegrating. Max challenges Dustin to a game of darts. Dustin accidentally pops one of the balloons and screams, “My child!” swooping down to cradle the remains. Mike and El get into a heated debate, with Lucas playing devil’s advocate for each, watching the argument like a tennis match. And Will? Will is observing from a safe distance, gnawing on twizzlers and pretending to watch Max throw darts. He wanders over to the boombox to choose a new tape, keeping half an eye on the newcomer.

He’s... well, probably the gayest person Will has ever personally laid eyes on. And, to be fair, maybe that’s stereotyping, but come on. Will has never met any other guy who paints his fingernails. And it’s not like the guy is _flamboyant_ or anything, but there’s a slight but definite lilt that sneaks into his inflections every once in a while. And the pin is the kicker. If it’s not a pride pin, why hide it under the lapel of his jacket?

And all at once, Will turns and notices Emmett in the kitchen, by himself, perusing the snack selection.

Okay, new plan: abort Operation Find Mike’s Secret Girlfriend. Initiate Operation Talk to the Cute Possibly-Queer Guy. Will can do this. He can do this. He’s gonna do it.

He’s not gonna do it. Nope, turning around, gonna talk to Lucas -

Okay, no, yeah, he’s gonna do it. To the kitchen. Walking into the kitchen, just taking a look at these snacks here, oh, hello, are these pretzels? Just gonna grab some pretzels, and...

“Hey.”

Will drops his pretzel. It lands on the floor and he dives to get it, reconsiders halfway through the motion, stands up, realizes he shouldn’t leave it on the floor, stoops _again_ and straightens with his face about as red as a midsummer garden tomato.

“Hey, uh -”

Name. Name. He forgot the goddamn name. He knew it three seconds ago, _what is it_ ? Shit, shit, say something, say _anything._

“Elliot, right?”

“Emmett,” he corrects amiably, and Will internally cringes. That’s strike one.

“Emmett, sorry. Uh, I’m Will.”

“So I’ve heard.” Emmett leans against the corner of the counter, bouncing a small handful of starbursts in one palm.

Will tilts his head. “Oh?”

“Yeah, Mike has mentioned you like once or twice... per day.” He laughs, showing that curve of teeth again, and this time Will notices that one of them is just slightly crooked. Emmett’s hand flicks, drawing a line between Will and where Mike is standing on the other side of the living room. “How long have you two been friends?”

“Since kindergarten,” Will half-mumbles, and then rushes to change the course of the conversation. He’d rather not go down that train of thought right now. Casting around for a change of topic, he eventually glances down to Emmett’s shirt. “You like Tears for Fears?” He does his best to keep the contempt out of his voice.

“Oh, yeah. I wish I’d gotten to see them tour when they came through Washington a couple years ago.”

“Yeah, they’re pretty good.”

Internally, Will crumples in on himself. He can’t believe he just said that. Distractedly, he pops the pretzel into his mouth, realizing too late that it’s the one he just dropped. Now he looks like the weird guy who eats stuff off the floor. He can’t spit it out now, can he? Okay, shit, just chew and swallow and hope he didn’t notice.

“So, you’re from Washington?”

“Seattle. Well, technically Kent. It’s just south of Seattle. But it’s just like half an hour from Pike’s Place and all that, so we basically live in the city. Lived. Anyway, Seattle just sounds more impressive. If you go around saying, _oh, yeah, I’m from Kent,_ no one gives a crap. Seattle sounds like you’re going places.”

Will laughs along, then gestures at himself. “Hey, at least it’s better than Hawkins.”

“You were born here?”

“And never escaped.” Will arranges his pretzels on his palm, just for something to do with his hands. Grains of salt stick to his skin here and there. “I’ll go somewhere else for college, though.”

“So what are you gonna do? Once you do escape.”

“Art,” Will answers immediately. And then, trying just a little too hard to be casual, “I’m an artist.”

“That’s cool.” Emmett sounds genuine, and Will stands up just a little straighter. “I’m kind of a musician, myself. I was in a band, back ho- well, back in Washington. That was pretty fun.”

“Oh, what do you play?”

Will is immediately picturing Marty McFly, onstage with his Gibson, and sure enough Emmett answers, “Guitar. Acoustic and electric.”

Will takes a risk, summoning up what he hopes is a coy smile, and says, “Well, you’re definitely much cooler than me, then.”

And Emmett laughs, unwrapping a starburst. And pops it in his mouth. And _blushes._

And Will thinks, _holy shit._

They talk for a little while, with Will eventually hopping up to sit on the counter, and it goes... surprisingly well, actually. Will is slightly less awkward once the initial jitters die down a little, and the conversation begins to flow more naturally. He starts to get a feel for Emmett’s personality. He seems cheerful, upbeat, but maybe a little reserved - or perhaps just awkward around new people. Not at all the Brooding Cool Guy that Will expected upon first seeing him.

Once, Emmett mentions an ex, without mentioning a gender, and it makes Will just bold enough to reach out and touch him lightly on the arm the next time he makes a joke. A brief touch. It’s all that Will has the courage for, just now. He doesn’t really know what to do with himself. He wasn’t trained for this. When was the last time he had a conversation with another gay guy? When was the last time he _flirted_ with a guy? Possibly never? He’s convinced he’s doing it all wrong. That he’s being way too subtle, or maybe way too obvious. It culminates when Will says, “Have you seen Aliens before?”

It’s one of the movies they rented to watch tonight - the other being Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, just for shits and giggles.

Emmett makes a face and laughs, “I actually never saw the first Alien. I’m not big on horror movies.”

And Will considers saying it. It’s on the tip of his tongue. _Well, if it gets too scary you could always hold my hand..._ But he’s not quite bold enough, and anyway, there are other people within hearing range. He’s about to open his mouth to say something a little more low-key - maybe, _well, if it’s too scary we could always huddle up, you know, for survival_ \- but then Mike appears in the kitchen, going straight for the chips. He’s got a beer in one hand and his hair is a mess, half-curling waves flopping over his forehead.

“Hey,” he says, digging out a handful of chips and nudging Emmett with a shoulder. “How you holdin’ up? Have they managed to scare you away yet?”

Emmett nudges him back, bumping him with a hip - a gesture that gives Will a moment of pause. It’s a strangely familiar motion. But then, Mike did say they were partners in class, so they must hang out a lot. Will just didn’t think they knew each other very well.

“Nah, not quite. Give it time, though.”

“The night is yet young,” Mike quips. Then, addressing both Will and Emmett, “El was gonna set up Life, wanna play?”

* * *

 After a few board games, completed with varying respect towards the actual rules and copious amounts of riotous laughter, the Party settles down to watch the movies. They turn the lights off, and Max was right - the glow sticks do look cool, once they’re cracked and scattered around the cabin. El is wearing about ten of them all up and down her arms as bracelets, Max has strung a couple together as a necklace, and Dustin is trying to get Lucas to wear one as a crown. Will let El give him a glow stick bracelet on each wrist - orange on the right, green on the left - and Mike and Emmett have one each. Yellow for Mike - and Emmett, Will notices, has chosen pink. The others are sprinkled throughout the darkness of the cabin; little flashes of neon color in the shadows.

They settle down with their drinks and candy, spreading out blankets and pillows to sit on. Mike and Emmett are on one side of the couch; Dustin flops down on the other end, taking up most of the space. Will and El sit in front of the couch, leaning back against it, and Lucas and Max sprawl out on their stomachs. The TV is small, old, and there’s a moment of doubt as they load up the VHS and the screen just flickers with static. Then Max army-crawls forward and messes around with the connecting cables. She grunts triumphantly, the screen bursts to life, and the Party - plus Emmett - cheers.

Will watches the movie with a somewhat critical eye. It’s not as good as the original - but then, it’s hard to beat Alien. He’s a little miffed that Dustin took up all the space on the couch, or he would have sat next to Emmett - just on the off-chance that maybe, just maybe, Emmett would want that hand to hold in the dark after all. But this is fine. Really. Will sits next to El on the floor, getting absorbed into the movie, shushing Dustin when he talks over the dialogue.

They’re about an hour in when Will turns around to say something to Mike - and finds only an empty couch cushion. He looks to Dustin.

“Where’d they go?”

Dustin chews popcorn. “Huh?”

Will jerks a thumb at the space where Mike and Emmett used to be, and Dustin’s brows lift in surprise. He shrugs.

“Probably to get more snacks,” Lucas says, his eyes fixed on Ripley.

“Shh,” El shushes them, and they all go quiet.

A few minutes pass. Mike and Emmett aren’t back. Will leans forward, peering around the corner, but he doesn’t see anyone in the shadows of the kitchen.

El turns as he stands up, her eyes reflecting the pale light of the screen. “Where are you going?”

“I’m gonna see where they went.”

She shrugs, re-focusing on the movie, and Will makes his way out of the pool of light cast by the TV. The cabin is dark, save for glow sticks stuck in random places, and he goes slowly. There’s no one in the kitchen, or the bathroom, or the bedroom. He tries the porch. Mike probably went to get something from the car and got distracted. The door squeaks closed behind him, and then he’s standing in the crisp night air. Moths flock around the porch light, smacking into it in their erratic flight. No Mike, no Emmett, but -

There. Two glow sticks on a porch railing, both curled into circles. One yellow, one pink. They’re linked together. And suddenly Will realizes: they’re Mike and Emmett’s bracelets. But if their bracelets are here, where are they?

He’s on edge now. There’s not a lot in these woods that would pose a real threat, but... Well, a Party member disappearing is never a good sign.  And anyway, where could they have gone? They’re in the middle of nowhere. Both of the cars are still here. Did something happen to them? Are they playing some sort of prank?

Will steps off the porch, skin pebbling with goosebumps, and goes to peer into the car windows. Nothing.

He’s about to turn back for the porch when he hears something. A tiny noise, barely distinguishable from the rustles and whispers of the nighttime forest. But then he hears it again - a kind of shuffling noise, paired with what might be a whispering voice. He creeps towards it. He moves lightly around the side of the cabin, old instincts preventing him from making any noise, anxiety trilling in his veins. His senses are on high alert; the only light comes from the increasingly distant golden glow of the porch light, and the emerging moon and stars.

He’s about to call out when he hears another whisper - and then an answering mumble, too soft for Will to make out words. He recognizes the voice, though, and he relaxes slightly as he slips soundlessly around a bush.

He’s half-convinced that Mike is about to pop out at him with a roar, and Will is going to jump, and Mike is going to laugh, and Will is going to smack him. But none of that happens. Instead, what Will sees through the sparse branches of the bush when he approaches is... it’s... He’s not sure _what_ he’s looking at, actually. It’s just a shape in the semi-dark, and it takes his eyes a second to adjust - and then all at once he realizes what he’s seeing, what he’s hearing, and he’s pretty sure he feels his soul leave his body. The shape is actually two shapes. Two partly-dressed figures, pressed up against each other, leaning against the trunk of a tree. The shirtless one is Mike, and he’s got one hand down the front of Emmett’s unzipped jeans.

From this angle Will can make out their profiles, and a hot-cold flash of shock bursts through him as he watches his best friend shove at the fabric of Emmett’s pants, pushing them down just far enough to bare - well - everything.

They haven’t noticed him. And he’s frozen, eyes locked on. He can’t move, can’t look away, even though he knows he needs to leave, _now_.

Emmett is kissing Mike. Somehow, that detail hits harder than the location of Mike’s right hand. Emmett is kissing Mike, open-mouthed and messy, the wet glint of their tongues just barely visible in the darkness. The sight of it makes something buckle in the pit of Will’s stomach. His own mouth is dry; he swallows.

This isn’t happening. He’s dreaming. It can’t be happening - except that Will is ruthlessly, undeniably _here,_ grounded in time and place, trapped in his own motionless muscles. Crickets peep to themselves, off in the woods, and a slight breeze stirs the leaves of the bush he’s staring through. The glow of the porch light is faint, but now that his eyes have adjusted it may as well be the sun. He can see everything. There’s no way his brain could have fabricated this; it’s no dream or hallucination. The only remaining explanation is reality, and that... That’s not... it can’t...

Mike’s fist is pumping steadily, his whole arm jacking up and down with the motion, and Emmett makes this half-swallowed _noise_ into Mike’s mouth. Soft, and somehow brimming with tension, and Will feels his pulse throb in his temples and fingertips as his own pants start to feel a little tight. He’s never heard a guy make a sound like that before - not outside of his own imagination. His eyes are drawn to Mike, then - drawn like a magnetic pull to his best friend. His unattainable, dorky, infuriating, gorgeous _, straight_ best friend. His bare torso, pale in the darkness and pebbled with gooseflesh like Will’s. His jaw, working as Emmett kisses him enthusiastically - and oh _fuck,_ Emmett is dipping a hand down, rubbing a palm over the front of Mike’s jeans in turn, and Mike _pushes into the touch,_ and Will shivers so abruptly and violently that he’s surprised they didn’t sense it somehow.

Will can hear someone’s breath catch audibly, but he can’t tell which one it was. Emmett’s other hand has knotted itself into Mike’s hair, tugging his head to the side, biting down hard at the junction of Mike’s neck and shoulder until Will can see Mike’s whole body start to squirm under the pressure. Mike gives a sharp little gasp. And Will knows he shouldn’t look, he _knows,_ but his eyes slide down between their bodies until he makes out the red-pink tip of -

Will’s eyes squeeze closed of their own accord, his synapses overwhelmed, glutted with input. He breathes hard for a moment, and when he opens his eyes again Mike is moving. His frame sinks, pine needles crackling slightly under his knees as he kneels and - holy shit - _opens his mouth_ , those full, pretty lips parting and those deep-dark eyes looking up at Emmett, affectionate and hungry for approval as he wraps a hand around the base and -

That’s all Will can take.

He’s not sure how he makes it back to the porch. One moment Will is watching Mike flick his pink tongue over the glistening-damp head of Emmett’s dick, and the next he’s stepping up onto the porch, his heart jammed in his throat and punching away at a million miles per hour. He doesn’t remember when his muscles finally unfroze, or how he managed to tiptoe away without alerting them. He leans against the wall of the cabin, panting like he just ran a mile, and waits - but no one comes around the corner after him. They didn’t see him.

What the hell.

Mike is -

He was -

_Shit._

This whole time, Will thought Mike was straight as an arrow. But he - he can’t be. Right? He wouldn’t have done that if he - damnit. Damnit, Mike! He had twelve whole years to say something, and - well, then again, Will never said anything either, but - Mike wouldn’t have done that it he wasn’t queer, right? There’s no way. Did Will even just see that?

He’s reeling, nearly dizzy, and he has another problem. He can’t really go back in to the Party with this obvious tent in his jeans. Then again, he can’t stay out here for much longer, either. What if someone else decides to come looking for the three of them? What if Mike and his... his... his _boyfriend_ finish up and head inside, only to find Will standing around on the porch, trying to will away a hard-on?

He takes three, six, nine deep breaths. In and out. Then he hastily tucks the persistent boner up under his belt, gathers himself, and eases open the front door.

When questioned, he says that Mike and Emmett went to take a walk. The Party accepts it without much question, and Will hugs a pillow as he stares through the screen, not absorbing a single detail of the movie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, I'll still be finishing The Unmarked Mixtape. I'll probably be switching back and forth between chapters of this and that as I finish up that one.  
> But, yaaaay, I finally started writing that one prompt! I have a lot of Thoughts about what might happen if Mike was kind of "first to the queer scene," instead of Will as we almost always see in fanon, and I wanted to do a fic that kind of flipped their usual roles and explored that. So I think this'll be fun! (Plenty of angst along the way... but fluff and smut too :) )  
> Please do let me know what you think! I love love love to hear your thoughts, especially just starting up a new fic like this :)


	2. Forest and Ocean

He’s in shock for about the next twenty four hours. In denial. His brain keeps telling him that he couldn’t possibly have seen that, that it couldn’t have happened, couldn’t have been real. The memory feels more like a dream, and he almost might think that he _did_ dream it if it weren’t for all the exact little details - the crispness of the visuals in his mind. 

He goes about the next morning with his happy face plastered on. The old defense mechanism is second nature. He drifts around the cabin in an automatic haze as the group rouses from sleeping bags, makes coffee in the cabin’s little kitchen, eats cold leftover pizza for breakfast. He makes cheerful conversation as they clean up, _hey El, yeah, fine, I think I slept weird, my back is killing me, do you want the last pizza slice?_

The group clambers into their two different cars, El locks the cabin behind them - with her keys, since Emmett is watching - and the Sinclairs’ unwieldy mini-van lumbers and bounces away down the dirt road. And Will does not turn around to watch Mike’s car rolling along behind them.

He gets home. He says hi to his mom. He tells her about the party - music, glow sticks and _Aliens_. He goes on errands, does homework, blots out the events of last night with the inertia of the mundane. 

It’s only that night, lying in bed, that the shockwave loosens its hold. Over the day, he almost could have forgotten about everything. It felt like a different world, a  different life. Those two things couldn’t possibly have happened in the same existence. Standing in line at the grocery store, tearing a hole in his math homework with a hard eraser, playing fetch with Chester and getting muddy paw prints on his shirt - these things couldn’t possibly coexist with a world where Will had been standing in the prickling-cool night air, gazing through a lace of leaves in shock at his best friend pressed up against another boy.

He realizes, all at once, how turned on he is. The images of the two together keep flashing in his mind. Emmett’s tongue stroking into Mike’s mouth. Mike’s hand pumping feverishly between Emmett’s legs. Emmett’s fingers tangled in Mike’s messy dark locks and pulling, exposing Mike’s throat until he breaks the kiss and dives, sucking at the pale skin of Mike’s neck between gasps. Placing the damning bruises that Will has been puzzling over for weeks. And Mike... Mike bracing his palms on Emmett’s hips as he dropped to his knees, only a hint of uncertainty in his actions as he brought his face level with Emmett’s dick and opened his mouth - his lips shiny with saliva and flushed red from their kiss, even in the dark.

Will can tell his cheeks are burning a hot scarlet, deep and tingling as a fever-flush. He’s never seen anything like that before. Not even in a movie, not even in pictures. The coveted magazines that sometimes get handed around locker rooms or flaunted in parentless circumstances never have anything like _that_ in their glossy pages. Ever. 

And Will, shamefully, spits into a palm and reaches into his own pajama pants and almost wishes - he imagines - he imagines that he was caught. That Mike’s eyes opened at just the right moment, before he knelt, and caught Will’s through the brush. That, after a heartbeat of shock, Mike lifted a free hand. Pressed a finger to his lips. Beckoned. 

Will imagines himself moving forward woodenly, heart hammering as it is now, breath shallow, throat dry. He imagines Emmett noticing him, surprise mixed with lust in his blue-gray, half-lidded eyes. In Will’s imagination he stands shakily beside them, close enough to make out their intermixing scents, and the white-hot coil in his abdomen clenches and rings as Mike takes his hand and guides it forward, pressing Will’s palm to the front of his jeans, where Will feels the rigid heat within. His fingers twitch as he imagines undoing Mike’s belt, sliding the zipper down, and dipping a hand inside to find flame-hot flesh. Mike sighs and pushes into the touch - like he pushed into Emmett’s touch - as Will gives a stroke. Emmett takes Will by the jaw and buries his mouth against Will’s, the ring on the side of his lower lip warm as his skin. 

And in real life, under the covers and panting so hard he’s jolting with the contractions of his diaphragm, Will arches and groans. 

Mike would... Will licks his lips. Maybe Mike would kneel in front of Will, instead. Lips parting. Looking up at _Will_ with those oh-so-familiar eyes, dark as the night sky with low-light and lust. Affectionate and hungry for approval. Will imagines Mike pulling down the zipper of _Will’s_ jeans, Mike baring _Will_ to the cool night air, Mike bringing the hot cavern of his mouth down over _Will_.

He comes imagining Mike’s mouth on him. And afterwards, it takes barely thirty seconds before a thick stew of unpleasant, wriggling emotions congeals in the pit of his stomach. Obviously he’s surprised. Stunned, blindsided, gobsmacked - call it what you will. 

But there’s also guilt there. For seeing what he wasn’t meant to see, fantasizing about what’s not his twice over. And jealousy. Oh, yes. With the initial shock chipping away, and the lust fading, Will is left with an empty bed and one thought looping through his mind: _Why him, and not me?_

* * *

Emmett misses Washington.

He misses the city, he misses the inlets, he misses the streets - the hills so steep that the houses seemed to sit at a forty five degree angle to the sidewalk. He misses the rain. He misses sitting in the bus and watching the misty horizon roll by. He misses his room in his old apartment - the one on the third floor that looked out on one of those steep streets, where, in-between the buildings, he could see the tiniest sliver of water if he craned his neck right. He misses the bookshops, and his old school, and the cherry trees, and most of all he misses his band. His friends. Hell, he even misses his ex. He misses catching the bus home with the gang after school. Hoofing it the five blocks from the bus stop to the Brady’s expensive house in the suburbs at the edge of the city. Setting up in the garage. He misses C.J. scribbling lyrics in red pen and messing around on the synthesizer, driving everyone nuts. He misses Warren tapping compulsively away on drums, Tom on the keyboard, Manda at the mic. Manda Panda. Manda at the Mic. And Danny, always showing him up on lead guitar, the obnoxious bastard. 

Yeah. He misses Danny. 

He’s not super jazzed about Hawkins, to be perfectly honest. It’s so _flat,_ and _hot_ , and so brown. There’s so little _green._ So little rain. The trees are sharp and scraggly, and the dirt is coarse. Everything feels so bare, so suffocating with empty space. Back home there was always the city all around - glass spires reaching up into the low-hanging clouds, people on every side, the constant hum and glow of city life. You could always find someplace open, at any hour, if you needed caffeine or food or even just the next book in a series. Here it’s like... there’s nothing. Everything closes at 8:00pm. The houses feel about a mile apart. In the city there’s always _somebody_ nearby. In Hawkins, Emmett feels like he’s living in a ghost town. You might go out and not see a single other soul in a mile of walking - or two miles. It makes his skin crawl. In a crowd you might get pickpocketed, or grabbed by desperate panhandlers, but at least there’s some comfort in the presence of other humans. A sense of distant kinship. The protection of anonymity. Out here in the openness, it’s like... anything could happen to you, and no one would ever know. You could vanish into thin air, and who would be the wiser? 

Whenever he walks home, or goes out past dusk, every horror movie he’s ever seen flashes through his head. Remote houses with dark pasts. The sense of being watched when no one else is around. Things rustling in the cornfields. Isolation. _No one is going to help you. You are alone._

Emmett _hates_ horror movies.

The house doesn’t help. It’s his aunt’s house, really. It’s on the scraggly edge of the suburbs, a couple streets from Hawkins’ pitiful shopping district. It’s small. Two stories, but narrow, and worn-down. And it was cramped _before_ he and his mom moved in. 

And the new school... well. Hawkins is... not progressive, let’s put it that way. Back home Emmett was fairly comfortable about being queer. He didn’t exactly go around _shouting_ about it, but he didn’t feel like he was gonna get beat up if he said something with the wrong inflection or wore something too brightly pink. He was far from the most interesting person in the school; he could turn invisible if he needed to. And anyway, he had his friends. Here it’s another story. 

No, Emmett isn’t super jazzed about Hawkins. But there are a few bright spots. O’Reilly’s New and Used Books, for one thing - that cozy little bookstore he discovered a week after moving in. 

His dad is thousands of miles away. That’s a huge plus.

And there’s Mike.

Emmett misses the ocean, but Mike makes him a little more fond of these sharp, sparse woods that at first seemed so unfriendly. Mike’s eyes are like deep, rich soil, or damp bark, or - when the light is dim and Mike’s eyes are wide and hungry - like the night sky, dark and bottomless. (Nothing like Danny’s piercing silver eyes, which were like rain clouds.) Emmett misses the ocean, but Mike is all forest - and he thinks that maybe he could acquire a taste for it. Mike smells the way that Emmett thinks a log cabin should smell - not like pine, but like resin and clove and spice, and something lighter, something more sunny. Cherry chapstick, as he discovers, and the fresh-linen scent that comes from Karen Wheeler’s way of doing the laundry. 

Yeah, he could definitely acquire a taste for Mike. For the way that Mike is enthusiastic and maybe a tad obnoxious (like Danny), and how he has dark, wavy-curly hair (darker and curlier than Danny’s) and how he had never done so much as kiss a boy, before Emmett (nothing like Danny). He’s a quick and enthusiastic learner. Always eager to please. Always a little afraid he’s not doing it right.

Mike seemed like such a godsend, really, when Emmett arrived in this little town and faced all the hostile expressions in the school hallways. The whispers. 

_Look at his hair. Look at his nails. Is that nail polish? Look at his piercings. What a homo._  

And then there was this Mike Wheeler guy. Open, and instantly caring, and spilling emotions out all over his face. Giddy and grumpy to an artless degree. Sweet and curious and loud and a little abrasive sometimes. 

Mike never shot Emmett a dirty look in the hallway, never muttered something about him to a group of sniggering friends. And when they ended up as lab partners in Biology, well, that was the nail in the coffin. Emmett liked him. 

Mike had fantasy paperbacks in his backpack, instead of science fiction, and he was in drama and AV club instead of a garage band, and his eyes were dark brown instead of bright silver, and he didn’t smoke. He never had scabs healing on his knuckles or a ripening bruise on his cheekbone from throwing himself into fights. He wasn’t arrogant like Danny. He didn’t chew cinnamon gum like Danny. But certain parts of Mike - just little edges and corners of him - reminded Emmett of the ex he left behind in the evergreen state. And when Mike started mirroring Emmett’s subtle flirtations back at him - when he started leaning closer instead of away, and glancing every so often down at the piercing at the left corner of Emmett’s mouth - well, Emmett thought, maybe he could pretend. 

And the thing was, he could. If he really wanted to, he could have sealed his mouth against those shy lips and buried his hands in that dark hair and he could have pictured Danny. But - and this is the funny thing - _he didn’t want to._ Because once he had Mike cornered in the lab storage room, while they were supposed to be working on a lab, Emmett took the dive with his heart in his throat. He pressed one hand to Mike’s hip and leaned in. And Mike - well, Mike froze up for a moment, and Emmett thought, _uh-oh._ But then he pressed back. Slowly. Cautiously. Like he was afraid the whole thing would shatter like glass if he moved too suddenly. Like he was testing it out. 

The door handle scraped, starting to turn, and Mike shot out of his reach so fast that Emmett almost fell over. They went about their business with faces burning, silent and awkward as a blonde girl in heels entered and began gathering lab supplies. 

But later, after school, Mike appeared at Emmett’s locker. They walked home side-by-side. 

Emmett kissed him again, after that, in the cramped and cluttered and half-unpacked room in the attic of his aunt’s house, and he realized that - no. He didn’t want to imagine Danny in Mike’s place. Because Mike was observant, and he _cared_ about things - so much, and wore it on his sleeve - and he was actually pretty adorable, and attractive in that awkward, dorky way, and interesting, and kind, and... and, well, Emmett needed somebody. He knew _no one_ here. He had no one. And it was about time he moved on from his ex, anyway. 

So he chased it. One thing led to another. They exchanged numbers. They went out to the movies. Mike was a nervous wreck the whole time, which Emmett found a little endearing. They talked. About movies and music and anime (Emmett) and D&D (Mike), and favorite foods and school and Hawkins and Seattle. They talked for hours - never about the deep stuff. Neither of them really wanted to veer into that territory. Emmett never brought up the grittier details of his dad, his old home, his past heartbreaks and miseries. Mike clearly had a few secrets of his own that he kept to himself, and Emmett didn’t pry. But they talked late into the night, and it was around 2:00am that Emmett finally ventured the question. 

And that’s how, about a month into the semester, they became boyfriends. 

It was about three weeks later that Mike invited him to hang out with his group of friends - “the Party,” as he calls them.

That was the second time in Hawkins that Emmett met someone and thought, _oh, you too?_

Will. 

Mike’s best friend. Half a head shorter than Emmett, with worn-thin flannel rolled up to his elbows and brown hair coming undone from its touch of gel, steadily falling forward into his face. The artist that Mike won’t shut up about. 

_Oh, Will used to love these when we were kids._

_Oh, Will did a book report on that last year._

_I think I left my jacket at Will’s house._

_That reminds me, Will drew this comic where..._

_I was talking to Will earlier and..._

Will this.

Will that.

They can barely go a conversation without at least one mention of him; of course Emmett was more than a tad curious to meet him. And of course he was more than a tad intrigued when he started picking up on certain signals.

He could be wrong. He’s misinterpreted the signs before. And anyway, even if Will _had_ been flirting with him, Emmett has a boyfriend already. A sweet, dorky boyfriend who has a proclivity to lapse into impassioned speeches about the lore of fictional worlds, and who keeps Emmett company during his empty days in this empty town, and who kisses him like it’s something novel, something fascinating, precious, worthy of slow and thorough exploration.

Emmett has Mike. So whether or not Will had been flirting is a moot point.

Is it worth wondering about? Maybe. But is it worth bringing up? Nah.

Anyway, that was a couple days ago.

Now, they’re near a back corner of Hawkins’ sole record store, flipping through a selection of soft punk rock that Emmett is trying to convince Mike to listen to. The cashier isn’t paying attention - she’s perched on a stool behind the front counter, reading a worn paperback and occasionally popping her gum - and the only other shoppers left a moment ago. So they’re not too worried about letting their hands brush and touch and overlap every few moments. He knows from experience not to try to hold Mike’s hand in public, though, or he’ll get a sharp jab in the ribs and a hiss of, _“Someone might see.”_

He’s just happy to be out doing something with someone. Happy and enjoying the moment, enjoying the autumn leaves falling past the window at the front of the record store, enjoying the dusty warmth of the store after the faint, sunny October chill outside, enjoying the way that his own denim sherpa jacket sits on Mike’s shoulders. The sleeves of Mike’s kitten-gray sweater are a little too short on Emmett’s arms, leaving a pale stripe of skin bare above his wrists, but otherwise it fits fairly well. Mike’s scent has settled into the corded material, and it hangs around Emmett like a whisper as he drifts from rack to rack. 

He’s out of the house, he’s doing something, the sun is shining, there’s the promise of a nice, long, clandestine makeout session later, and best of all, he’s not alone. It’s a good day.

“You’ve never heard of Articles of Faith?”

“No, never.”

“Frightwig?” 

Mike shakes his head, amused. 

“You know, Frightwig! _Cat Farm Faboo_?” 

“Okay, these are just nonsense words. You’re just saying nonsense words now.” 

Emmett pulls a record with a little exclamation and pushes it at Mike. “Okay, look, you’ll like this one. It’s The Psychedelic Furs.” 

Mike takes it like it might explode. “Does this one have people screaming over a lot of electric guitar?” 

He points at Mike. “Rude. Hush. And, no, it’s more your speed.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“You know. Less heavy, more...” He makes a face. “Easygoing, I guess?” 

Mike scoffs, but flips the record over, scans the song list, checks the price. “How is it that you’re so bizarrely cheerful all the time and yet you mostly listen to - I don’t even know, demon orgies? It sounds like demon orgies. You’re weird, you know that?” 

“I keep all my rage in my music. This one’s not full of screaming, though, I promise.” And because it’s a good day, and Emmett is feeling more like himself than he has in weeks, he starts singing in demonstration. 

He wasn’t a singer in his band back home, just a guitarist. His voice isn’t the best. He sings quietly, so the cashier won’t hear him over the store audio system.

_“Love my way, it's a new road,”_ he starts, a little off-key. He grabs for Mike’s hand, and Mike shoves him and laughs, embarrassed. _“I follow where my mind goes. They'd put us on a railroad, they'd dearly make us pay, for laughing in their faces, and making it our way.”_  

Emmett jostles him, grinning, and Mike mutters, “Stop.” But he’s smiling. Then he peers uncertainly at the record again. “Is that about...?” 

Emmett lifts his eyebrows in question. 

“You know.” 

“Do you mean, is it queer?” 

A shrug. Mike tries to look nonchalant. 

Emmett shrugs back. The motion makes his guitar case start to slide off his shoulder and he hefts it back up. “Could be.” 

Mike considers the record once more, and then tucks it under his arm. 

Mike, as Emmett has discovered, is woefully uneducated when it comes to queer culture. Not Mike’s fault - conservative parents will do that to you. And anyway, Emmett has been having more fun than he’d like to admit playing the tour guide. 

_Well, if you look to your left you’ll see Queen. Specifically, our lord and savior Freddie Mercury. Of course you’ve heard of The Village People, yes? Yes. Bit mainstream, but they’re okay. Why are you laughing? Let’s see, we have Bowie, Madonna... Did you see_ Stand By Me _? Oh, wait, you’re a_ Star Wars _geek, right? Luke and Han. Think about it._ Star Trek, _if you want to be an even bigger geek. Have you read any of Stephen King’s stuff? Or are you more of a classics person? Because Oscar Wilde - oh, my god, wait. Please tell me you’ve seen_ Les Miserables. _What do you mean, what does that have to do with anything? It’s_ Les Miserables, _Michael._ Les Miserables _is_ always _relevant._

Mike pays for his record, and Emmett pays for the one Mike picked out for him - “Payback,” as Mike put it - and they leave the store.

* * *

Fuck it. 

That’s been Mike’s primary mode of decision making in the past year.

Fuck it, fuck everything, fuck the whole world. All those angsty singers were right: society is a garbage fire, the world is broken, nothing is fair, and very few things are right. They should be. They could be. But they aren’t.

His parents mutter about _phases_ and _teenage rebellion_ when they think he can’t hear them over the TV. Well, if realizing that society is bullshit makes him a rebel, then fuck it. He’s a rebel.

Fuck it.

It started about a year ago. 

Well, if he’s being honest, it started several years ago. The whole great mess of it. If he’s _really_ really honest with himself - which he’d rather not be, most of the time, not about this - it started with the Upside Down. When the world turned on its head and his best friend was gone, and then dead, and then miraculously alive again, and there were monsters, and other worlds, and a girl that could do magic, and secret government agencies, and secrets upon secrets upon secrets. He was twelve years old, and the world was not the safe, stable, rules-abiding place he had always been told. And that’s where the seed was planted.

And then he was thirteen, increasingly sullen as he glared at the floor and listened to teachers and parents tell him all about how _“This isn’t like you,”_ and _“You’re smarter than this,”_ and, _“You’ve got to shape up your act, or you’ll be facing the consequences.”_

First it was graffitiing the bathroom stall, cussing out a teacher, feeling a strange flutter somewhere deep in his diaphragm when he grabbed Will’s hand that day in the Byers’ paper-strewn house.

Then he was fourteen, and it was all happening again, and he was trying so hard to do what he was supposed to do. To shape up his act. He straightened his hair, he doted on his girlfriend, he rolled his eyes at things that weren’t cool. 

And then fifteen. And he hated it. All of it. He let his hair grow out shaggy and messy and curlier than ever, and those seeds planted years before came to life. He was a rebel again, and this time he refused to back down. “Shaping up” hadn’t worked, so fuck it.

It was the only thing that kept him sane as his life both fell apart thread by thread and, at the same time, settled into a suffocating, crushing normality. His sister left for college - left him alone. His parents fought more, and then less, and less was worse. Less fighting meant days-long icy silences, tension that even Holly picked up on. Bad news in the papers, on TV, in hearsay. And Mike took to burying himself in fiction to get away from it all. He carried a Sharpie marker with him and started scrawling his favorite controversial quotes in places they’d be seen. He argued with everyone, about everything. He broke up with his girlfriend, after two years of slowly realizing that romance wasn’t right for them. He got detention frequently - and then less frequently, as he learned to be stealthy. He snuck out. He went to parties with friends he had made in Drama. He ranted and vented to his best friend, and they frequently ended up on the roof outside his bedroom window, watching the stars as they talked about life, the universe, and everything. He briefly considered getting a piercing or tattoo. He bought a big, square, three-year calendar and meticulously counted down the exact number of days until graduation.

Then he was sixteen and doing a lot of thinking. A lot of writing. He kept a spiral-bound notebook as a journal - which, in a fit of frenzied paranoia after his mother deep-cleaned the house and nearly discovered it, he burned in the Wheeler family fireplace when no one else was home. Because if his parents had found out about him, found out what he had been thinking, what he had been _doing_...

It was the Upside Down that did it. At least, that’s what he always blames - what he points his finger to when he starts to beat himself up about what a freak he’s turned into. Because if blood-seeking faceless monsters can emerge from punctures in the fabric of reality, then surely the world has bigger problems than a boy who likes girls - and boys. And one boy in particular.

It took him nearly two years after everything returned to normal before he could puzzle it out from the mess of his brain. He had known, deep down, for years. But once he admitted to himself that he had a crush on his best friend, and that he had for a long time... The dam broke. Everything else started to fall into place within a period of barely a week. He started remembering things he had never given a second thought to before. Signs he never saw. It was like looking at a Magic Eye Picture: everything is just a meaningless mishmash, at first, and then the longer you stare the more details you see. And then all at once something in your brain shifts and you’re looking at a cohesive picture. Tah-dah! You’re gay.

All the crushes he never realized were crushes. All the classmates he thought he hated, or actors he thought he just admired. A deluge of little mundane moments that suddenly took the form of a pattern.

The _Raiders of the Lost Arc_ poster - featuring a grinning, half-shirtless Harrison Ford - that he begged his parents to buy for his room when he was ten, even though his mother said the movie was too violent and he shouldn’t be watching stuff like that.

All the times when seven-year-old Mike pretended not to know how to braid during craft time so that the loud-mouthed, dark-haired boy in the seat next to him would grab his hands and show him.

Five-year-old Mike and Will, very seriously planning their wedding with the aid of crayons for note-taking and illustration.

It’s just, Will grew up and dated Samantha Elwood in eighth grade, and discusses pretty actresses with Dustin and Lucas, and makes a strange expression whenever anyone mentions gay people. Probably because he got so much shit for it when they were kids. Funny old world, isn’t it? All that time, Troy and his goonies were targeting Will, when the real queer was just a few feet to the left.

That was last year, and he’s had a little time to adjust to the idea. At least, he’s not panicking anymore. As much. So really, after everything, it wasn’t that big of a jump to let Emmett kiss him in the lab supply closet that day.

Fuck it, nothing means anything anyway. And he doesn’t want to end up like his parents. Why not like guys?

Why not hesitantly flirt with the silvery-blonde, pierced, pretty obviously queer new guy in school?

Why not let him lean in close, then closer, and closer, with the excuse of brushing an eyelash from Mike’s cheek, until Mike could feel Emmett’s breath on his own lips?

Why not show up at his locker after school? Why not walk home with him? Why not kiss him again on the bare mattress on the floor of his room, no bed frame, moving boxes half-spilled all over the attic? Why not do it again? Hands shaking, heart pounding painfully, brain a dizzy tangle of giddiness and attraction and sharp-heady fear of being caught.

It’s been an insane, halfway wonderful whirlwind of a semester. Mike feels thirteen again - like he has a significant other for the first time all over again. First kisses again, first time holding hands, first time going on a date. Except, he and El were just fifteen when they broke up. Still basically kids. The most they had ever done was kiss, and even that was usually under the hawkeyed supervision of parents. They had never driven a little ways out of town to a back road, and parked, and climbed into the back, and kissed. And kissed. And kissed. El never clambered through Mike’s window late at night, when his family was sleeping, and slipped cold hands under his shirt, whispering, “Warm me up?” They never burrowed into bed together to sleep - and then didn’t sleep. All of that is new. Not just new because it’s with a boy, but _completely_ new. Terrifying-new, breathtaking new. Addicting new.

Stolen moments and late nights. Exchanging favorite music. Driving in circles - driving out into the farmlands just to escape town for a couple hours. Acoustic guitar. Inscrutable Japanese animation on VHS, subtitled with varying levels of accuracy. Going to any old movie just to sit in the back corner and make out, or whisper-critique the movie if there are too many people nearby. The smell of the slender menthol cigarettes that Emmett sometimes buys. Carefully concealed hickeys and rain-slick pavement. Passing notes in school. Hiding out in the school bathroom to avoid going to class, passing Emmett’s electronic football back and forth. Emmett’s calico cat, Nausicaä, jumping up on Emmett’s lap and butting in between them, demanding attention. Once, sparkling wine smuggled from Mike’s mother’s stash. Secrecy and adrenaline. This has been Mike’s semester.

Emmett’s lighter catches with a hiss, and a moment later a trail of whirling smoke flutters out into the cool air around his head. 

He offered Mike one, once, but the smoke made him feel sick - and anyway, he’s too afraid that if he comes home smelling like smoke, his parents will pounce on him. They’ll pounce on anything, lately. Any little excuse to distract themselves from the marriage that fell apart years ago. Irrationally, he fears that if they smell smoke on him, somehow they’ll trace it back to Emmett, and to _Mike and Emmett_ , and what they’ve been doing, and it’ll be a life sentence in the nuthouse for Michael A. Wheeler.

He tries not to think about it.

It’s fall, and Hawkins is briefly dazzling with bright, creamy yellows and smoky oranges and, here and there, a flash of rusty red. Leaves dot the sidewalk, too fresh to be crunchy yet. Halloween decorations have been up for a couple weeks; plastic skeletons sway from trees and paper bats are taped up in windows. 

They’re on their way to meet up with the Party again, since the party at the cabin went well. Everyone seemed to like Emmett okay - and he could use some more friends in Hawkins. Nobody gave him any weird looks, that Mike could see. Nobody made any comments about the black polish on his nails or the pin on his jacket. Nobody noticed when they slipped out the front door halfway through the movie.

Mike adjusts his grip on the paper shopping bag he’s carrying, casting a sidelong glance at his boyfriend.

He might be getting addicted to adrenaline, he reflects. He’d never done anything like that, before. Before he and Emmett slipped out the door when no one was paying attention, snuck a little ways off into the woods, and Mike knelt on the forest floor with his heart in his throat and gave his boyfriend a blowjob in the middle of the forest. That was a first for him. Well, the sneaking off to make out, not so much - but they’ve never gone quite so far out in the open before. Anything beyond a zipper is usually reserved for somewhere with a locked door. Emmett’s bedroom, in the narrow, crowded house that he and his mom now share with his aunt. The back of the Wheeler’s second car (“Mike’s” car), parked out in a dark corner beyond the edges of town. The basement, if Mike’s parents aren’t home. The AV room, once. But never outside, a stone's throw from where the Party sat watching _Aliens_ in the cabin.

It was the second ever blowjob Mike has given. He was cold - nearly shivering, because it was nighttime in the woods in October and his shirt was lying somewhere behind him, caught on the prickly branches of a bush where he had tossed it. The cold seemed to make everything electric, lending a sharp, starlight-stark quality to the moment. It made him even more desperate to press as close to his boyfriend as possible, shoving into the heat of his torso, his mouth.

Mike wonders, furtively, if Emmett might return the favor the next time they’re alone. Or if, like last time, he’ll coat Mike’s fingers with lube from his own hand and guide them down, angling Mike’s hand with his own, voice throaty as he murmurs, “Like this.”

And then, because he’s going to pop a boner if he doesn’t cut it out, he makes himself think about something else. Anything else. Homework. Detention. Halloween candy. Long division.

Okay. There. Crisis averted.

Emmett’s gaze is distant. They’ve been silent since they left the record store, and Mike almost wishes he could open his mouth and say, _Tell me what you’re thinking. I want to know what’s happening in there. Tell me why you stare at the clouds so much. Do they remind you of something? Is there a reason you never talk much about your dad? Is there a reason your hands shake when somebody yells just a little too loudly? I want to tell you about a journal that I burned. I want to know when you realized you were queer. Was it just a year ago, like me? Have you always known? Are you angry? Are you so angry at the world that you want to tear something down with your bare hands? Are you counting down the days until you can graduate high school and never come back? Is that why your music is so loud and rough - because you never are otherwise? Is your smile real or are you sad inside?_

But they don’t say that kind of stuff.

Mike shakes himself, and points. “Turn here. We were gonna meet at Dustin’s. You still wanna go?”

Emmett adjusts the strap of his guitar case on his shoulder and flashes a bright smile, scattering the thoughts in Mike’s mind in an instant. He’s never met a boy who was so, well... pretty. Winter-pale, especially with the platinum hair and piercings glinting bright silver in the sun. Gray-blue eyes fringed with short, dark lashes and dark brows. Narrow face, narrow nose. One slightly crooked tooth in a row of otherwise perfect pearly whites. A pinkish tint to his cheekbones, nose and ears, thanks to the nip of cold.

“Follow you anywhere, Cap’n,” Emmett says amiably, and Mike smiles back.

“Onwards, then.”

* * *

Will and Mike stare at each other from across the Hendersons’ dining room with matching expressions of surprise.

More accurately, Will’s expression of surprise is directed towards Emmett. To put it delicately, he was not previously aware that Mike’s “friend” was going to be joining them today.

And Mike, based on his expression, completely forgot that the Party was going to play D&D today.

“Hi,” they say at the same time, with identical tones of wary surprise.

Emmett lifts a hand a beat later. “Hey.”

“Hey, man.” It’s Dustin, his wide grin just barely visible over the swaying tower of snacks he’s ferrying to the table. “You playing with us today?”

Emmett glances at the table, clearly puzzled by the grid board, character sheets and dice. “Board games?” he guesses.

“Dungeons and Dragons,” Mike says, slipping briefly into what Will long ago termed his Professor Voice. It comes out when he’s explaining something. “God, I forgot that was today. It’s a collaborative story game that -”

“Oh, this is that fantasy thing you were telling me about.”

“Right, right.” 

Mike shucks his coat as he talks and - actually, that’s not Mike’s coat. And Emmett’s dark gray sweater is not _Emmett’s_ sweater. Will tries very hard, and fails very quickly, not to imagine how the switch occurred.

“You don’t play to win,” Max interjects as she enters from the kitchen, holding a Dr. Pepper in one of Mrs. Henderson’s rubbery foam drink cozies. The cozy features a print of Alf the Alien holding a fork and a knife, and it reads, _I ❤ Cats!_ “In D&D, there are no winners.” She plops down at the table, staring Emmett in the eyes with calculated seriousness. “Only losers.”

“Doesn’t that make you a loser?” Lucas says from behind her as he and El enter. “Oh, hey Everett.”

“Emmett,” Emmett and Mike correct.

“Irrelevant,” Max says to Lucas, and takes a sip of Dr. Pepper. She seems to notice Mike’s expression all at once. “You forgot, didn’t you?”

“Uh.” Mike glances at Emmett. He puffs out his cheeks. “Yeah.”

“You don’t have to DM,” El pipes up from Will’s shoulder, making him jump. She ruffles his hair until he ducks away. “Will can take over if you’re busy.”

Not technically a lie. He’s done it once or twice before. 

“Uh,” says Mike again. Then his voice lowers and all at once he’s talking to Emmett - _just_ Emmett, turning to him and ignoring everyone else, lowering his voice as if they’re sharing some secret. “I’m sorry, I totally forgot -”

“No, it’s fine.”

“It’s just, we hardly ever get a chance to play anymore -”

“It’s fine.”

“I mean, do you wanna... watch, or...?”

“Whatever you wanna do.”

“You could play if you wanted.”

Will’s head snaps up. Emmett? Play? As in, join the Party? Obviously Mike just means for today. A temporary arrangement, not for good. But still - he can’t just do that. Can he? He can’t just casually invite somebody to the Party - to _their_ Party, _their_ campaign, _their_ thing that they’ve been doing for _years_ -

“I dunno how to play,” Emmett is saying, and then El offers, “It’s not that hard,” and Dustin says, “Yeah, we can guide you through it.”

Will casts a desperate glance around the table, trying to psychically communicate, _Why are we okay with this? We didn’t talk this over. Mike didn’t even ask us if this was okay. This is our thing._ Our _thing. Guys?_

He gets a shrug back from Lucas that might mean something along the lines of, _Whatever, man. I wasn’t expecting it either, but who cares?_

El - who Will has the strangest feeling heard his entire internal monologue as clearly as if he was speaking aloud - meets his eyes. She tilts her head - a question. Probably, _What’s your deal?_

He doesn’t know how to answer. So instead, with a decision so sudden he almost knocks over his drink, he pulls a blank character sheet from the folder and shoves it at his best friend’s boyfriend.

“Here,” he says. There’s bitter taste at the back of his throat. He swallows it down and summons up his _everything-is-fine_ mask, smiling. “Mike’s the Paladin, Dustin’s a Bard, Lucas is a Ranger, El’s our Mage, Max is a Zoomer, and I’m a Cleric. You could be a Rogue or a Monk or a Druid. Or maybe a Fighter.”

He almost says, _Or a Wizard,_ but he doesn’t want Emmett to be a Wizard. Will the Wise was a sort of wizard, back when Will used to play that character. Will is the Party member that deals with magic. He and El. Cleric and Mage. Casting spells is kind of Will’s thing in the Party. Emmett doesn’t need to be doing Will’s job.

“Or a Wizard,” Mike says, finally settling at the head of the table.

“That sounds cool.” Emmett takes the paper with a smile and sits next to Mike. “Spells and magic and pointy hats, right? I’ll be that.”

* * *

As much as Will hated the idea at first, it’s a good thing they’re all playing D&D. If everyone else wasn’t absorbed in the campaign, they’d definitely be noticing how out of it he is.

Emmett’s character is a human Wizard named Jen. The Party picks him up at a tavern to “help them on their quest” - though he’s really more of a hinderance. Level One, after all. He’s basically dead weight.

Emmett is exceptionally bad at role-playing the dialogue. He’s too self-conscious about it, going red and mumbling, preferring to simply state that his character says something than to act through it. And he has to stop every two seconds to ask how to do something. Always confused which die to use, how to tally up his rolls.

Which is fine. Really. None of that is what bothers Will the most.

What bothers him the most is that now he _sees_ it. Now he knows. And they don’t know that he knows. And he has no idea how he didn’t see it before. The little signs. The glances, the touches, the inside jokes. The energy between them. The rest of the Party doesn’t seem to notice a thing. 

Of course they don’t; they’re not looking. They didn’t see what Will saw - they don’t know what he does. So when Mike scoots his chair a couple inches closer to Emmett’s as their heads bend over Emmett’s character sheet, nobody blinks an eye. When Emmett gazes at Mike with a little smile, watching him as Mike delivers a scene with practiced gusto, no one else seems to give it a second thought. 

Mike is gay.

Will turns the thought over and over in his mind. He’s been turning it, trying to polish it into a comfortable shape, for days. But the sharp little barbs won’t smooth out. Mike is gay. Mike has been gay this whole time, and he never said anything. Why didn’t he just say something? Why didn’t _Will_ ever say anything? It could’ve been... they could’ve... So many things could have been different.

Mike is gay. He likes boys. There’s no other way to explain what Will saw. Is there? He tries to produce another explanation, but the encounter he observed was quite obviously _not_ a shy, experimental venture. Mike was touching Emmett. And, based on what Will saw, he was _good_ at it. Confident. And this was clearly a practiced interlude. Smooth. They snuck away, they hid, they fucked, they snuck back, no one was the wiser. A polished and seamless dance.

Will sits at the Henderson’s oval dining table, sipping at his soda, tossing the dice when it’s his turn, and he tries very hard not to hate Emmett. Well, he dosn’t hate Emmett. Not exactly. Does he hate Emmett? He hates that Emmett is sitting beside Mike. In Will’s traditional seat. He hates how often their eyes meet - the silent messages that pass between them. And Will, try as he might, can’t stop looking at them. Especially when the Party breaks for intermission.

There’s Mike - _his_ Mike, who he’s known since they were five, all earnestness and exuberance. Mike with his dark hair like rich soil and dark pines, eyes like black coffee. Mike in his sweaters, with notes on make-believe worlds scrawled in the margins of his notebooks, freckles sprinkled across his cheeks like a little galaxy.

And then there’s Emmett, hair pale as sea foam, eyes the blue-gray of a stormy ocean. With a black guitar case slung on the back of his chair and slim silver rings glinting at his lip and eyebrow, his jacket still carrying the faint scent of salt and rain - or maybe that’s Will’s imagination. They stand next to each other and they’re opposites, dark and light, Emmett standing an inch over Mike in a way that makes Will’s skin prickle. 

Maybe he’s just highly unused to seeing two boys in a relationship, in this world where that’s just not something you see. Not out in the open, not in magazine pages, not in movies, not on television, not in books, not in classic art. So when you _do_ see it, it’s like seeing a two-dollar bill. It’s something that makes you do a double-take. Anyone would be a little taken aback to suddenly find out that their best friend has a boyfriend. Maybe it’s just that. 

Or maybe Will is angry. 

That’s _his_ Mike. And he knows he has no right, no _real_ right, no stake or claim to him, but - that’s - he - damnit, that’s _Mike_! That’s his best friend, his partner in crime, his go-to, his... his... 

And all at once, Will realizes just how _not over_ Mike he is. 

And he thinks, _oh, fuck._

He thought he was. He was very proud of it, in fact. Look at him, recovered from his childhood puppy-love crush! Moving forward with his life, maturing, leaving the past behind, growing up. Good job, Will. You did it.

A few days ago he thought that if he just saw Mike with his new girlfriend, he’d be able to move on for good - maybe because that would prove, once and for all, that Will had no chance. But now this. Now Mike is holding out a mini cupcake to Emmett - tall, easygoing, awkward Emmett, good-looking in a plain, somewhat pinched way, with his bright smile and the occasional lilt to his inflections - and Emmett’s nose is crinkling playfully as he licks the frosting off. And Will’s blood is boiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Spongebob narrator voice) "Six... months... latair."
> 
> ...
> 
> I have nothing to say for myself.  
> Let me know your thoughts? XD  
> Seriously though, especially because this fic is so structurally different than most of the byeler stuff I've written, I would love to know what you think.  
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Halloween

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may think that I gave Will my own Halloween costume. But no, the truth is much worse. I had planned this Halloween costume for Will months ago, and then copied it for myself in real life. That’s how much of a nerd I am.  
> Special thanks to the-angry-pixie for being my costume department and soundtrack coordinator for this chapter.

“Does he _always_ have to bring Emmett around?”

The words are hissed over the slice of greasy pizza that Will smuggled out of the cafeteria in a cocoon of equally greasy napkins. Students aren’t supposed to take cafeteria food out of the cafeteria - not that anyone pays attention to that rule - and the Party didn’t feel like eating in the school building today. It’s one of those gray, endless school days where the sky is dark and low, and the classrooms are either freezing or boiling, and approximately fifteen hours have passed since first bell and it’s still somehow only lunch time. No one was excited about the prospect of staying inside the godforsaken school building for any longer than absolutely necessary.

They’re in the Sinclairs’ van.

Not actually _going_ anywhere - there aren’t many places to go in Hawkins over lunch - just sitting. Parked on one end of the crumbling parking lot, watching halfhearted scraps of mist drag past the car. Droplets collect on the windows.

It’s increasingly rare that they’re all together for lunch. What with Dustin’s profusion of clubs, Mike’s friends from Drama, Will’s proclivity to loiter in the art room whenever he can, Lucas and Max striking out on their own more often than not and El being generally unpredictable, the Party is often split during the lunch hour. But not today. Today the stars aligned, and for another glorious twenty seven minutes, none of them have to go anywhere.

It would be perfect if Mike was here. But he’s MIA, and Will has a horrible feeling that he knows exactly what his best friend is up to.

Then again, Will isn’t feeling great in general. Halloween is a bad time of year for him. But he pushed through without incident last year, and he’s determined to do it again. He’s not a kid anymore; he doesn’t need anyone tiptoeing around smiling those too-casual smiles, watching him out of the corner of their eyes. Waiting for him to show any sign of beginning to crack.

General shrugs and expressions of indifference from the Party.

“He’s not _always_ around,” Dustin says, leaning forward to see Will beyond El.

Lucas and Max, typically, have stretched out in the front seats, twisted to face backwards so they can talk to the others. Will, El, and Dustin occupy the back. Well, the middle. The wayback is empty. Normally, Mike and Will would be sitting in the wayback, with Mike trying to trace doodles or quotes into the fog on the rearview window. 

“Yeah, he is,” Will sniffs, dabbing grease off his pepperoni. “He was at lunch on Wednesday, and Mike just _had_ to bring him along to the arcade last week, and -”

“To be fair, we did bump into him on the way.”

“And Mike invited him to our _campaign_!”

Max, in the front passenger seat, rolls her eyes and swallows her bite of apple. “That was one time, Will, are you still mad about that? It’s been weeks.” She slides a thumbnail into the skin of her apple, turning it, idly slicing out a perfect circle and peeling it out. She examines the resulting nail-sized circle of white in the otherwise red fruit. “He is kind of annoying, though.”

Will gestures. “Thank you!”

“He can be a little hard to swallow,” Dustin rephrases diplomatically, and Will glances at him. Wondering what he means. Wondering, for the gazillionth time - _does that Party know? Not about Mike, but about Emmett? Have they seen the pin and put two and two together? Do they_ know _? And if they do, what do they think?_

_What do they think about people like that?_

_What would they think of me?_

When Will zones back in half a moment later, the conversation is still on Mike’s new “friend” from Biology.

 _“I don’t drink soda because it has too much sugar and it’s bad for your teeth,”_ Lucas pipes up in an exaggerated imitation of Emmett’s inflections. _“Do you have diet soda? I’m too cool for your regular soda, I have to drink diet.”_

Sniggers here and there. The impression is surprisingly accurate - and maybe just a little mean.

_“I have to carry my guitar around everywhere, because how else will people know that I’m a wannabe rockstar?”_

“Oh, my god,” Max hiccups, covering her mouth to avoid spraying everyone with half-chewed apple as she laughs. “That sounds exactly like him.”

“Because that’s how he talks,” Will says. He ignores El’s nudge of warning, pushing on now that he has a sympathetic crowd to vent his frustrations. “ _All_ the time.”

That’s not strictly true. Emmett’s speech turns much more bland and monotone when they’re at school, or around potentially judgmental adults. His personality emerges in safer circumstances. It’s something Will hates to admit that he can relate to. The façade. Allotting only _this_ much of his real self to emerge under these circumstances, and _that_ much under _those_ circumstances, and a bit more around friends, and a different slice of the pie graph of his personality on Wednesdays and Fridays after 9pm. Who knows how much? Who would suspect? Who can he bare his soul to, and who can only see as far as his skin? Who knows him, but only in a good mood? When does he need to playact the good student, the aloof artist, the girl-obsessed teenage guy? It’s exhausting. 

The difference, Will tells himself, is that Emmett isn’t in the closet. Not really. _He_ gets to walk around with chipped nail polish and a rainbow pin only half-hidden under his lapel. _He_ gets to have a boyfriend. And go on dates and get kisses and snuggle with someone and make out and flirt. Must be fucking nice.

He shouldn’t, but he opens his mouth again. He’s on a roll now and it feels good to voice what’s been going around and around in his head. “He’s probably not even that good at guitar. Oh, and his music taste? Sucks. He keeps trying to start conversations with me about bands as if I’m ever going to listen to -”

He registers it a half second before it happens. For about the past five seconds, everyone’s eyes have moved past him, to the car window. Just before he turns his head, there’s a knock.

Guess who?

Will, El and Dustin have to clamber into the wayback to make room for the new arrivals. Will hunkers down in the middle seat, face warm, wondering just how much of that was audible through the car windows. But if Emmett heard anything, he doesn’t show it. He’s all smiles as he and Mike climb into the middle seat and shut the door behind them, laughing, their ears and noses and fingers red from cold.

It’s fine.

Really, it’s fine. Will wanted Mike to be here, and now he is. The Party is all together. They shoot inside jokes back and forth in increasingly complex and self-referential webs. They share food. They complain about homework and substitute teachers -

_“I mean, come on, I’m not allowed to go to the bathroom? It’s ten steps down the hallway, it’s not like I’m gonna get lost.”_

\- and it’s fine.

“Edgar, _no,_ ” Mike is laughing at something Emmett said. “Edgar, why are you so sad? Stop being so sad.”

“ _But the stick would not stop,”_ Emmett intones, cryptically, and Mike nearly falls over laughing.

An inside joke. They already have inside jokes.

Fantastic.

Will tries not to be sullen. He really does. He even begins to succeed as he’s drawn into a heated debate over which movie apocalypse would be the most fun to live in - and then Emmett offers Mike half of his tuna fish sandwich.

Mike hates tuna fish. Mike has always hated tuna fish. And Will can’t help but feel a little bit smug when Mike makes a doubtful face at the half a sandwich being held in his direction.

Then Mike shrugs. “Sure,” he says, and trades Emmett half the tuna fish sandwich (on _wheat_ bread - goddamn _wheat_ bread!) for half of his own PB+J - an old favorite that Mike never quite outgrew. 

 _You’re his boyfriend,_ Will thinks venomously, biting into the last of his own greasy pizza. _You should know that Mike thinks tuna fish tastes like mermaid vomit. You’re supposed to know things like that._

Mike takes a tentative bite of the corner of the sandwich, and to Will’s horror-slash-amazement, his expression brightens. He looks at Emmett. 

“It’s good,” he says, surprised, and Emmett laughs. 

“I told you. Mayonnaise, relish, and lemon juice. Works miracles.” 

 _I can cook too,_ Will thinks dejectedly, sliding a little further down in the seat so that he doesn’t have to watch them anymore. _I can make shepherd's pie. And brownies._

“Are you gonna cut it out? You’re being ridiculous,” El hisses in his ear, pinching his arm, and he elbows her away. “Mike throws enough tantrums. Now you, too?”

“El. Not now.”

“Yes now.” She hunkers down further, pulling him into a dusty corner of the backseat to whisper. “You’re being weird.”

He shrugs and stares off towards the front of the van, pretending to listen to Max talk about _Freedom Fighters_.

“Spill.” She jostles him, and when that doesn’t work, she leans her cheek on his shoulder and pouts. Her eyes grow serious after a moment of studying him. “Is it about Mike?”

“What are we whispering about?” Mike is hanging over the back of the seats, grinning at them. “I heard my name. You guys gossiping about me?”

“Might be, might not,” El says, and puts her entire palm over his face to push him back to his own seat. 

He pops back a moment later. “Come listen, Emmett was gonna give a demonstration.”

_No._

“Demonstration of what?” Dustin says, disengaging from his debate with Max, but Will just sits up with grim certainty.

And sure enough, there’s the head of an acoustic guitar sticking up beside Emmett’s shoulder. White plastic pegs, silvery strings, dark wood. 

_Oh, no._

Emmett shakes a pick out from the hollow depths of the instrument, then arranges it on his lap as best he can in the confined space and starts tuning it, seeming a little embarrassed by Mike’s repetitions of, “He’s really good, just wait.”

“I’m not that good,” Emmett says after the third time, and Mike scoffs. “I’m still learning.”

“Whatever.” Mike sits criss-cross-applesauce on the opposite side of the middle seats, back braced against the door, facing his boyfriend. Grinning. Proud.

Emmett finishes tuning and gives a few preparatory strums. “Right.” He clears his throat. “Well, what should I...?”

“Halloween,” Mike suggests. “You should play something for Halloween.”

“Oh, right,” Will says, “That’s tomorrow.” As if he wasn’t hyper-aware of it. Like he is every year - always just waiting for that other shoe to drop, for everything to start all over again. _Anniversary effect,_ they call it in the doctors’ office.

He knows Mike is looking at him, trying to scan his face, decipher his expression, but he pretends not to notice.

“Halloween,” Emmett echoes, drumming his fingers on the body of the instrument as he thinks. “Hm.”

He positions his fingers. Will can’t help but sit forward, curious.

Will knows what it is before the first bar is done. The intro is a little wobbly, a little off-beat, but then he gets into the main riff and the Party chuckles and exclaims in appreciation, because of course. Of _course_ he had to play _Ghostbusters._

 _“If there’s something strange,”_ Dustin sings, badly, and the whole group joins in, “ _In your neighborhood. Who you gonna call?”_

The worst part is, he’s not even that bad. 

No. No, actually, the _worst_ part is that looking at Emmett - watching his fingers move up and down the fretboard, watching his hair flop over his narrow face as he concentrates - Will understands. He understands what Mike sees in him.

_“Ghostbusters!”_

* * *

“So, what are you doing tomorrow?”

They’re on their way back to the school building, drifting their separate ways, not looking forward to the other half of the school day. It takes Will a moment to realize that Mike was talking to him.

“Huh?”

“ _Huh?_ ” Mike imitates, and shoves him gently. “Wake up there, Rocketman. Come back to earth. What are you doing for Halloween?”

“Oh. You know.” He hefts his backpack with a toss of his head. “Nothing. Probably just handing out candy with my mom.” He laughs, trying to make it sound less pathetic than it is. “It’ll be fun. We’ll watch some scary movies or something.”

Normally he and Mike would already have plans - but Mike hasn’t said anything about it this year.

Mike makes a _Mike-face_ , but he won’t push the issue. Will knows he won’t - not about Halloween.

Emmett isn’t dumb. He can clearly tell there’s something unsaid here, something understood but unspoken hanging in the air between the two of them. From his place on the other side of Mike, he looks back and forth between them. He catches Mike’s eye, makes some sort of expression, then looks back to Will.

“Hey, uh, you wanna come with us?”

“Come with you,” Will echoes, his tone flat with surprise, and it sounds much more acidic than he intended it to. He tries again: “Come where?”

“Trick-or-treating,” Mike says, and Will snorts.

“You’re going trick-or-treating?”

“ _Holly_ is going trick-or-treating. _We_ are chaperoning.”

“Doesn’t your mom usually take her?”

Will’s eyes meet Mike’s and he understands at once. _Parents fighting, Mom’s not in the mood, Holly’s anxious because Mom’s anxious, not a good idea._

“Not this year,” is all Mike says.

“And there’s a party afterwards,” Emmett adds. He nudges Mike. “Who’s house is it?”

“Emmy’s.”

Will’s eyebrows shoot towards his hairline. “Emmeline Stevens?”

Mike turns a little red.

Will laughs in disbelief. “How the hell did you get an invite to _that_?”

Mike launches into an explanation - something about the SGA and the drama club working together to advertise this semester’s play, he and Emmeline got to talking over posters, etcetera. 

Before Mike can get off on a tangent about the play, Emmett cuts in, “So, you’ll come?”

Faced with both of their expectant faces, Will doesn’t have much choice.

* * *

Why did he agree to this?

He feels stupid. He _looks_ stupid.

Actually, he thought he looked pretty good, all things considered. It’s a last-minute costume, cobbled together out of what he had in his wardrobe, but it came together well, if he does say so himself. He even spent a few minutes at home standing in front of the mirror, admiring his handiwork from different angles.

His chest puffed up just the slightest bit when Mike opened the door, looked him over, and smiled big enough to show teeth. “Hey,” Mike said, stepping back to let him in. “That looks great.”

He felt great. It was shaping up to be a fun evening after all... that is, until he registered what Mike was wearing.

Mike and Emmett are skeletons. Tight black jeans, black shoes, close-fitting black sweatshirts, with white “bones” cut out of felt and glued on. More “bones” painted onto the backs of their hands and fingers. They hustle Will into the Wheelers’ guest bathroom to proudly display the glow-in-the-dark paint outlining the bones. As a final touch, they pull the hoods of the sweatshirts up. Two lithe, gently glowing skeletons in the dark, waving their arms in the mirror and laughing.

But that’s not all. Oh, no. The tight-fitting pants do absolute _wonders_ for Mike’s ass, Will can’t help but notice, but that’s not what made his jaw drop when he first saw Mike.

They don’t just have skeletal bodies. Their faces, too, are painted. Ghoulish black-and-white skeleton stage makeup. Eyes, noses, and the hollows of their cheeks blacked out in sharply contoured shadow, the rest of their skin paper-white. Lines painted over their lips and at the sides of their mouths to represent a skeletal grin. 

Camouflaged into the design of the facepaint is more than a hint of eyeliner.

The effect, overall, is sharp and exotic, and Will kind of can’t believe how good Mike looks in eye makeup. It’s subtle, blending into the deep hollows of his “skull,” but it’s there.

This clearly wasn’t a last-minute costume decision. _They_ didn’t spend part of the afternoon hunting around the house for pieces of clothing to cobble together into something passable. They might have been planning this for weeks.

Will almost hates it. He _wants_ to hate it, because not only do they both look _good,_ but they look good _together_. A pair. A matching set. And here’s Will dressed as Marty McFly, in jeans and an orange vest over a denim jacket and a white plaid button-up, wearing Walkman headphones around his neck, a watch, aviators, sneakers, suspenders. Hair styled with gel, intentionally messy. The whole shebang. He thought he looked good, earlier - he still does - but he feels out of place next to the two matching skeletons beside him, in their slim black jeans and face paint and black hoodies, white “bones” glued over their clothes.

“Wiiiiiiiiiiillllllllll!”

A seven year old slams into him, nearly sending him careening.

“Holly Miss Jolly! Wow, your costume! That is so cool, look at that! Give us a spin.”

She twirls obligingly.

“Alien queen?” Will guesses.

“Princess Alien,” says Mrs. Wheeler’s voice from the staircase. She descends with a big _I-have-to-look-cheerful-for-company_ smile on her face and a camera in her hands. “She couldn’t decide between the two.”

 Holly proudly bops around the living room in a big purple dress over a day-glo green alien suit. An orange pumpkin-head candy bucket knocks against her knees. “Hallow-een, Hallow-een, Hallow-een,” she sings.

Will ruffles her hair and she jerks out of the way with an indignant cry of, “Stop, I just fixed it!”

“You know,” he says, kneeling to fix the curls he rumpled, “the queen is the most powerful. Without her, there’d be no swarm, and the aliens would never get to take over any planets at all.”

Holly gapes, and then she _glows._ She spins to face her mother. “I changed my mind. I’m not the Princess Alien, I’m the Alien Queen. Oh, hi, Emmett! You look very pretty today.”

“As long as we don’t need any more costume adjustments,” Mrs. Wheeler sighs, at the same time that Emmett chuckles, “Thanks, Holly.”

“Aw, Mom, no,” Mike gripes, catching sight of the camera, and Mrs. Wheeler snags him with a practiced grip on his shoulder.

“Just a few,” she says, batting a hand at Will. “Come on, Will, you too. Get in there. You all look so adorable. Okay. Mike, smile. _Smile._ Okay, ready? Say, _trick-or-treat!_ ”

The flash goes off - _boom._

* * *

_Boom, boom, boom._

The music reverberates in the cage of Will’s ribs.

Everyone shouts to hear one another. A muddle of scents overlap in the too-warm air. Perfumes, colognes, cheap alcohol, chips and dip, wax and smoke from the decorative candles. Will keeps expecting somebody to knock over a candle or set fire to their costume any second, but thus far, it hasn’t happened. 

There are a lot of Robocops milling around this year. Several ninja, with varying degrees of adherence to the stealth code. Vampires, policemen, at least two Princess Leias, one Indiana Jones, some zombies, Madonna, several witches. Will has been keeping an eye on a guy in a varsity jacket and jeans, trying to figure out if he was abandoned by the other four members of the Breakfast Club or if he just didn’t bother dressing up.

Because, hey, at least crowd watching is entertaining and doesn’t make him want to punch something.

This is one of the biggest parties of the year. The Stevens are a popular family - before Emmeline joined Student Government, her older brother was Prom King. Not a year goes by that they don’t host a Halloween party, an end-of-school party, a Fourth of July party. Big, expensive house in the well-to-do corner of town; half the school population crammed into one building; plenty of alcohol. What could go wrong?

“You have whole _worlds_ in there -” Emmett taps Mike’s head. “- like whole, complete other _worlds,_ with maps and histories and people with entire backstories and personalities and minds of their own, and -” 

He takes another sip from the red plastic cup in his hand. He’s not slurring, but he’s clearly _just_ on this side of tipsy. His gestures are big and enthusiastic, nearly spilling his punch onto the couch they’re all sitting on.

Will sips his own punch. Perched on the arm of the couch beside them, trying to cultivate an expression of detached enjoyment. _Yeah, great party. Fun time. I’m having fun. Not so much fun that I want to get up and go talk to all these people I don’t know, but fun._ In front of them, balloons drift around on the floor and against the ceiling, black and orange party streamers twist from corner to corner, and cheesy Halloween decorations fill every inch of space. Ghosts and goblins, witches on broomsticks, Frankenstein’s monster, black cats, gravestones with puns on them. _Ima Goner. Rigg R. Mortise. She always said her feet were killing her - now we believe her!_ And, of course, skeletons.

Will knows that Mike writes. He knew that, didn’t he? Mike has been writing short stories since they were kids. Fantasy-adventure stuff, usually - or at least, it was. Years ago. Is it still, or does he write other things now? Has it really been years since Will has read any of Mike’s stories? More importantly, has it really been years since Mike _offered_ to let Will read his stories? Why? They used to share that kind of stuff. They used to be each other’s sounding boards.

“- and you just _made_ that. You wanted it to exist, and you just -” Emmett clicks his fingers and makes a hissing sound, as if summoning something out of thin air. “ _Fsst,_ made it. You just made it exist. You just _thought_ it into existence, and now it’s this whole other universe that other people can read about and go into with their _minds_ , and - how is that not the coolest thing ever? That is fucking amazing. Do _not_ bullshit me with that _it’s nothing special_ crap. You’re a magical fucking creature.” 

He bops Mike on the nose with the word _fucking_ and Mike’s lashes flutter as he blinks a few times, surprised by the touch and then bashful as he grins. He tries to hide it by looking at his shoes, his hair falling into his face.

“That’s how writing works, dumbass,” he laughs, but his smile is warm when he looks back up at Emmett.

Will turns back to people-watching.

It’s been like this all night. Ever since they arrived, he’s been drifting around awkwardly behind Mike and Emmett, pretending he’s having fun. At least while they were trick-or-treating he had Holly to talk to, so he didn’t feel like quite such a third wheel. 

 _“I was working in the lab late one night,”_ Bobby Pickett croons from the supercharged speakers, and bodies stream towards the center of the huge living-room-turned-dance-floor as partygoers recognize the familiar silly song. _“When my eyes beheld an eerie sight...”_

Oh, mistake. Looking back at Mike was a mistake. Will was going to make some comment about the song, but when he turns he gets an eyeful of Mike reaching out to tuck an errant sprig of white-blonde hair back into Emmett’s hood. Emmett has kept his hood up despite the heat of the party, staunchly upholding the desired effect of the costume. Mike, on the other hand, got too hot as soon as they arrived and pushed his hood back, his shaggy curl-waves standing out around his head. The gesture is just innocuous enough to slip under the radar - and yet, his fingertip lingers on Emmett’s temple for just a moment too long.

That’s it.

Will can’t take any more of this.

He tilts his cup back, chugging the last of his punch, slams down the cup on a side table, stands, and thrusts out a hand towards Mike.

What he means to say is, _Hey, listen, it’s Monster Mash. Do you wanna go dance, just for shits and giggles? C’mon, it’ll be like when we were kids._

But when Mike looks up at him with his lined eyes and sharp-contoured cheekbones, which over his already angular face make him look either princely or sickly, Will forgets how to talk for a second. 

He blurts, “Uh - I... _Dyouwandance_?” 

“What?” Mike yells, leaning forward. 

Will’s pulse flutters in his throat like a hummingbird, and a fine mist of sweat is just beginning to rise at his temples and hairline. Too late to turn back now. 

Maybe that punch was a little stronger than he thought, or maybe he’s just so _sick_ of seeing those dark eyes turned towards _Emmett,_ because Will grabs Mike’s sweaty hands in his own and pulls him up off the couch. “Come dance with me.”

Mike balks. Uncertain, hesitant. This is weird - this isn’t something they normally do, and they both know it. “Will, you know I’m a terrible dancer.” 

Will quirks an eyebrow. “It’s _Monster Mash,_ Michael, not the Shostakovich Waltz No. 2.” His confidence falters and he drops Mike’s hands, looking down to mumble, “Well, look, we don’t have to...”

“No, I -”

Mike seems to teeter. He looks questioningly back at Emmett, who salutes them with his solo cup. 

“Hey, don’t drag me into this. I’m an awful dancer. My moves are deadly. No, really - I’d die.” He stands, just a little unsteadily, and stretches like a cat. “I was gonna go find some snacks, anyway, and maybe scout out a bathroom. Meet you in five?”

That seems to do it. With this blessing, Mike shrugs and lets Will lead him towards the middle of the room.

Will’s heart is pounding so hard it hurts. The world feels wobbly and unreal with adrenaline. What is he doing? What is he _doing_?

Will’s nerves do not go unnoticed by his best friend. “You doing okay?” Mike says, ducking his head to be heard over the noise, speaking almost directly into Will’s ear.

He squirms away, a hot little worm of excitement lighting up unbidden in his belly at the feeling of Mike’s breath on his ear. “I’m fine, Mike,” he snaps.

“Are you sure? We can go home if y-”

“I said I’m fine.”

“Okay, well, you just seem...” Mike chews on a piece of dry skin on his lip, smudging the chalky makeup of his skeleton grin. The unspoken words are there: _weird. You’re acting weird._  

Will flounders, caught in the act, and then catches ahold of a life raft: a near-truth. “I’m just bored.” There’s a childish pout sneaking into his voice, and he’s still bitter enough about Mr. Guitar Genius that he doesn’t bother suppressing it. “Am I not allowed to have fun with my best friend on Halloween? I’ve barely talked to you.”

Mike’s brows crinkle up. “We’ve been talking all evening,” he says, sounding genuinely puzzled.

“Look, are we gonna dance, or...?” Will trails a hand towards the crowd, doubt creeping in again. “Are we just gonna stand here on the edge of the dance floor like middle school wallflowers?”

 _“They did the mash,”_ the speakers announce. _“They did the monster mash!”_

And they do.

And for a few minutes - just a couple minutes - it’s perfect.

They’re being stupid. Just having fun. Flailing their limbs around, laughing until they snort, bumping into each other and other people, doing dumb dance moves. The Robot. Walk Like An Egyptian. Oh God Bees, So Many Bees. The Shopping Cart. Underwater. Oh God The Bees Are Back. The Sprinkler.

The song is almost over and they’ve somehow worked their way from the edge of the room towards the middle, the crowd closing in behind them to swallow them up, but Will doesn’t mind.

Mike speaks up suddenly. “You know, you... look good.”

Will barely has enough self-control not to snap his head up and stare at him. Is he joking? No... that wasn’t Mike’s joking-voice. Will loses the beat of the song entirely, lost for a moment. “I - thanks, I guess. I feel like I look stupid -” 

“You don’t look stupid -” 

“It was really last-minute -” 

“It looks good though.” 

“But I mean, you! Look at you. _You_ look good. You look...” He looks Mike up and down - wow, that punch _was_ stronger than he expected - and maybe it’s his imagination, but he thinks he hears Mike’s breath hitch. “You look really good.”

Something shifts. _Monster Mash_ is over, but another song has already started to fade in. The temperature seems about fifteen degrees warmer in the crowd, and on a snap decision, Will peels off his vest and denim jacket, balls them up, and tosses them over the crowd in the vague direction of the couch.

“Too hot,” he says by way of explanation, but he’s not sure Mike heard him. The music _thumps_ in his eardrums, drowning out almost everything else. It’s a miracle Hop hasn’t been called on a noise complaint yet.

It’s _Never Let Me Down Again_ by Depeche Mode playing now, and more vaguely-tipsy dancers pour into the huge living room by the second. The crush of bodies forces them into each other’s space; they couldn’t take a step back if they wanted to.

 _“I'm taking a ride with my best friend,”_ the vocals come in over the smooth, racing-heart-beat of the music. _“I hope he never lets me down again. He knows where he's taking me. Taking me where I want to be. I'm taking a ride with my best friend.”_

In the semi-darkness, it’s easy to forget the rest of the world. And Will is happy to forget.

They’re surrounded by dancing couples. Most of the singles and groups are closer to the edges; here, the crowd is thick, elbows everywhere, a girl’s wig flicking Will on the cheek as she spins. Couples bobbing, popping and locking, working up a sweat. 

_“We're flying high. We're watching the world pass us by. Never want to come down, never want to put my feet back down on the ground.”_

By the time the song starts to wind down, Will is getting out of breath. Starting to laugh a little - stumbling as somebody bumps into him, steadying himself against Mike’s shoulder. Suddenly, acutely aware that they haven’t been Silly Dancing for several minutes but _really_ dancing, borne to the center of the dimly lit living-room-turned-dance-floor by the shifting throng of bodies, lost and unnoticed in the crowd, half-blinded by the low light and the whirling flash and sparkle of the disco balls that have been strung up in each corner, a flashlight trained on each so that the room is alive with shivering, darting, spinning points of illusory light **-**

He takes a deep breath to steady himself, unbuttoning his cuffs and hastily rolling his sleeves to the elbows. Mike is going to step away now. He’ll realize how long they’ve been on the floor, or he’ll realize how close they are, and he’ll gently disengage himself. He’ll smile, say he had fun, and go look for his boyfriend.

Except that he doesn’t.

Except that they haven’t moved, or rather they’re _still_ moving, and the next song comes on with two bell-like notes which slide into the opening line, harsh, loud - “ _Reach out and touch faith -”_ and the throb of the guitar riff crashes through the air -

Whoever’s DJing must be a Depeche Mode fan, because now it’s _Personal Jesus_ starting up. A heavier, darker, pulsing song, pounding through them, reverberating through the cages of their ribs. And instead of stepping away, Will swears that Mike steps closer. And when Will tilts his head back just a degree, he meets his best friend’s eyes - so dark and dilated from the dim light that they appear solid black, no pupil and no iris, just deep-dark pools that reflect the storm of disco ball lights.

There’s something in Mike’s eyes that makes Will’s whole body go taut.

They’re dancing, again, still, but they’re not playing anymore. No more half-embarrassed grins, no more exaggerated goofy movements - all of that is gone. They don’t have much room for big exaggerated dance moves, anyway, not in this crowd. They’re invisible in the anonymous crush, breathing in the thick heat of sweat and perfumes and alcohol-punch.

They’ve barely said a word since _Monster Mash,_ and that suits Will just fine. He’s not good at words. Words might shatter this, might ruin it. He just wants to live it, for as long as he can, greedily gobbling it up with a fierce, blood-burning kind of excitement-satisfaction. He wants to remember all of it. He wants to _absorb_ all of it, make it a part of himself.

How Mike’s makeup makes him look strange and exotic and sharp in the dim party lighting. His features, as familiar as Will’s own reflection, turned alien and startling. The glow-in-the-dark touches on his costume stark and white-neon-green in the shadows. How they’re in each other’s space, close enough for Will to smell Mike’s cologne, and he suddenly wonders if Mike can smell _his,_ too - if it’s just as novel-familiar to Mike as it is to him -

And Will is painfully, acutely aware that _Mike likes boys,_ Mike is attracted to boys, Mike might just be attracted to _Will_ \- especially tonight, when Will is all suave and done-up in his Marty McFly costume - 

\- how their faces have ended up close, very close, when did they get that close -?

\- how Will can feel the cloud of body heat around Mike’s torso - 

\- how they start moving together - not just dancing in proximity to each other but dancing _with_ each other - bobbing, swaying, and stepping, pulsing to the beat - 

\- how Will doesn’t know when or why it happens, really, but suddenly he realizes that their belt buckles are almost touching, and he reaches out in a moment of dizziness, not enough oxygen in his body, his hand landing on Mike’s hip. And Mike, in response, tilts into the touch. Bearing forward on the next beat, _almost_ \- but not quite - grinding against the cradle of Will’s hips.

Suddenly, fervently, Will wishes he’d do it again. For real this time. He wants - irrationally, desperately, he _wants_ \- to throw caution to the wind and wind his arms around Mike’s torso, pulling him flush against his own body. They’re almost there. It would be so easy. One rush of insane courage, one moment of madness. One shift of weight, one hand shoved up into the sweat-damp wild curls at the back of Mike’s head and they’d be kissing.

Will hasn’t kissed anyone since eighth grade. It was Samantha Elwood - a perfectly nice, if a bit blunt and tone-deaf girl who had the misfortune of dating Will for several months. He tried to like her. He really did. Of course, it hadn’t worked. Their first and last kiss had been shy, clumsy, and completely underwhelming.

There must be some cruel irony in the fact that Will once kissed a girl and felt nothing except for stomach-shredding nerves and the warm-damp touch of her lips, but now, just _thinking_ about kissing Mike, his knees have gone a little weak and his whole chest aches with a sharp, sweet, undeniable urgency.

_Mike, Mike, Mike._

Drifting in his half-fevered delirium, Will tries to remember the last time he and Mike were this physically... well, _intimate._ _Close_ doesn’t seem like the right word. They’re close all the time. Leaning against each other, tussling, in each other’s space. But not like this.

This is different.

 _Mike_ is different, somehow. Mike, who is generally so avoidant of anything qualifying as _strenuous physical activity._ Mike, the awkward, bullheaded, kind dork that Will knows as his best friend. But this? This is a side of Mike Will doesn’t think he’s seen before. This Mike is breathing hard, but not slowing down. This Mike is someone intense, and gorgeous, and focused - dare he say, confident - and almost dangerous.

Okay. Will likes a little danger. Game on.

 _Kiss me,_ Will thinks. He even tilts his head back another centimeter, leveling his gaze at Mike’s. _Kiss me. I’m right here._

Of course, they can’t. They’re in public, in the middle of the crowd, and the song is ending with one last string of instrumentals.

And Will isn’t Mike’s boyfriend.

The spell breaks so abruptly it could almost be comical. Mike blinks, pulls back just half a centimeter, and from there it’s a lightning-swift domino effect. Will cringes back like he was zapped, Mike looks away as if embarrassed, the song hums to an end, and they’re left standing, stiffly, in the middle of the dance floor. 

“I should -” Mike is saying, but Will is already moving away.

“Right, yeah.”

“Sorry, I just -”

“No, yeah, I -”

They babble nonsensically over each other, both trying to act casual as they drift to the edge of the room. Distractedly, Will looks for his jacket. His hands are shaking. That was, perhaps, the closest he’s ever come to wordlessly outing himself, and the delayed-reaction muted terror is beginning to set in. He doesn’t even know why it matters anymore. It shouldn’t, right? Not with Mike. Clearly, Mike isn’t going to judge him for his... preferences. And yet that instinct of self-preservation, of secrecy, is so deeply ingrained that his stomach is in slippery knots, the aftershock of what _almost_ happened making him sick.

Mike, meanwhile, stands with his hands shoved in his pockets. He looks as guilty as a dog with stolen food all over its face. No doubt thinking about how he left his boyfriend all alone for nearly fifteen minutes and danced with someone else.

Another old instinct is rising, one that’s just as hard to deny:

_Run._

“I, uh,” Will mumbles, finally locating his jacket and vest and throwing them on again. “I need some air.”

And with that he makes his escape.

* * *

That was way too close.

Mike lifts his hair from the back of his neck as he walks, breathing out a hard puff of breath. Trying to cool down. He almost scrubbed his hands over his face until, at the last fraction of a second, he remembered the makeup.

He can’t do this to Will. It isn’t right.

What’s that old saying? If you love something, let it go?

Yeah, he said it. He said the L word. Or - _thought_ it, at least. He may be a moron, and it may have taken him several years to figure out, but he managed it eventually. The process was just... rough. After all, admitting to himself that he had a crush on his best friend meant admitting to himself that he crushed on _guys._

But really, admitting the L-word was almost easier than admitting to a crush. Saying _that_ word seems as natural as the muscle memory of walking to Will’s house. Of course he loves Will; he’s Mike’s closest friend. Always has been, probably always will be. Aren’t they practically brothers? More than brothers? Mike will probably carry some level of platonic devotion to him until the day he dies. They’ve been integral parts of each other’s lives for as long as he can remember; anything else is unthinkable. 

But Mike also knows that there’s no chance of anything ever happening.

Not only is Will straight - Mike is his _best friend,_ he would _know_ by now if Will wasn’t, Will would have said something - but after everything Will went through as a kid, all the bullying, there’s no way he’d want anything to do with Mike’s “unnatural homosexual tendencies.” 

So Mike - like a somewhat tragic hero in a story, as he consoles himself - is resigned to pine from afar and move on.

Or, at least, that was the plan. And he was getting along very well, if he does say so himself, until -

Until that dance. Until, in the middle of the dance floor, Mike suddenly became aware of just how all-over Will he was. _Shit._ There’s no way in hell Will didn’t notice. There’s no _way_ he didn’t realize that Mike wasn’t just playing around. Shit, shit, shit, _shit._ Was he making Will uncomfortable that whole time? Fuck, Mike had practically groped him! Was Will just too polite to say anything, willing to keep his mouth shut and indulge Mike in whatever the hell he thought he was doing? He didn’t _seem_ uncomfortable, so Mike hadn’t thought that -

He stops so suddenly that a girl runs into him, sloshing her drink a little.

“Hey,” she complains, halfheartedly, and he mumbles back a dry-mouthed, “Sorry.”

A brief, delicious moment of stomach-fluttering doubt. A _what if._

What if Mike had been right? What if Will _wasn’t_ uncomfortable? What if Mike hadn’t been imagining it, hadn’t been projecting - what if Will actually _was_ as into that as Mike was?

The moment ends as soon as it begins, and Mike shakes his head, _hard,_ continuing along his aimless trajectory. There’s a big difference between enjoying a somewhat risqué dance with a friend and actually being _into_ that friend. Will just likes dancing, that’s all. God, what was Mike thinking? Getting all touchy-feely with Will like that. Will got enough shit about seeming queer when he was a kid - what is Mike trying to do, start up those rumors all over again? Make his best friend’s life hell again? And - 

With a sick jolt, Mike remembers. His boyfriend. He has a boyfriend. God. Emmett said he was going to find snacks, and that was - what, three or four songs ago? And what has Mike been doing in the meantime? Dancing with someone else. God, he’s an idiot. A big, stupid, selfish idiot that somehow managed to make his best friend uncomfortable and his boyfriend lonely and sad, _at the same time._

Stupid Mike. Stupid, stupid, _stupid_ Mike.

He has got to get it in check. He’s got to get himself under control.

Mike makes a decision, then and there. He is going to enjoy this party. He is going to have fun. He is going to spend time with his boyfriend, and if Will is at all interested in being around him again after _that_ , he’s going to make sure that Will has fun, too. He’s not going to embarrass his best friend any further. He’s going to be perfectly friendly, perfectly normal, and perfectly platonic, with absolutely no untoward advances. It’s going to be a good fucking Halloween.

And that’s that.

* * *

The screen door opens with a screech and closes with a bang. The back porch is quiet, removed. This house faces a wide, well-trafficked street which, two hours ago, was doubtless swarming with trick-or-treaters, but the backyard is deserted. At this time of the year, the pool is empty and covered, and the Stevens’ big back porch offers no view other than some stately maple-beeches and the backs of other houses. The cold air on his overheated face is like a slap of freezing water, and he relishes it. Out here, he’s actually glad to have the jacket.

He stalks across the length of the porch, seeking the corner farthest from the door, and braces his elbows on the railing. Rakes his hair back from his face with both hands. Sighs. The beat and melody of the party music is still audible, but muffled, leaving only the bassey undertones of song to filter through the night.

_Shit._

“Hey, McFly.”

Will has a heart attack.

Nearly.

Clutching his chest, he glares into the dark corner that just spoke to him. He’s frustrated, he’s tired, he just went through emotional whiplash, he’s high-strung, and on top of it all, he’s still fighting down a wave of stubborn arousal. He is absolutely not in the mood for any kind of fuckery.

The perpetrator’s hands pop up in mock-surrender. “Don’t shoot! I’m an innocent bystander.”

On second glance, he’s not nearly as well-hidden as Will first thought. Will was just so absorbed in his own thoughts that he walked right past the guy taking a smoke break on the porch.

On third glance, Will realizes: it’s not a stranger. It’s Mildly Arrogant Theater Guy. The senior who Will spent a bit of time puzzling over earlier this semester because he genuinely couldn’t tell if the guy was flirting or if that was just how he acted with everyone. He hasn’t really thought about it in weeks.

Will doesn’t feel too bad about not recognizing him for a second there. They’ve talked, now and again, but they’re barely acquaintances. And anyway, Theater Guy - what’s his name? He played Hamlet, Will remembers that - isn’t exactly in everyday school garb tonight. His dark hair is combed back with enough gel to make it gleam, and despite the chill, he’s wearing nothing but light-wash jeans and a white tank top. His fake mustache, while obviously a tad worse for the wear after an evening of heavy partying, succeeds in making him look a little older than he is.

“Hey, Freddie,” Will responds dryly. He turns around to lean back on the porch railing, facing his unexpected conversation partner.

Theo - that’s his name, Theo - lifts a triumphant fist to the air and an invisible microphone to his mouth in a more-than-passable imitation of Freddie Mercury. “Ay-oh,” he half-sings in greeting, then grins. Pleased with himself. 

The invisible mic points towards Will.

“No.”

“C’mon.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“C’moooon.”

Will snorts, but smiles. “Ay-oh yourself.”

He’s content to leave it there, letting silence take over again as his racing heart calms. But he can feel Theo’s eyes on him. When he looks back, Theo is taking a drag from his cigarette, sighing out a cloud of smoke, white and swirling in the damp, keen October air. It’s a different brand than what Will’s mother smokes; he can smell it, familiar-alien, from here.

“Smoke?”

“Oh -” Caught off guard, Will looks down at the pack being held in his direction.

Theo cocks his head. “Never tried?”

“If you met my mother, that wouldn’t be a question.”

He considers. After tonight, maybe - 

But isn’t that the kind of thinking that gave his own mother a deep, wheezing cough that’s only worsened over the years? And anyway, he _has_ tried it before, and it always makes him feel sick and lightheaded. And on top of everything, he doesn’t want the headache.

He shakes his head minutely and Theo snaps the paper flap back down. “Suit yourself.” The pack goes back in his jeans pocket. He seems intent on making conversation, despite Will’s sullen glare. “So what’s got you so not-in-the-mood?”

“Life,” Will says flatly. He doesn’t plan on elaborating, but can’t help mumbling, “Oh, nothing, you know. It’s just a lot of fun when your friends run off and leave you so they can make out or some shit.” He’s editing the truth, rounding off the sharpest edges and erecting veils to mask the most incriminating details. “It’s fine. I kind of thought Halloween was supposed to be _our_ thing, but -” He lifts his arms, face twisting in a dry, acidic smile, then lets them drop. “Whatever.” 

Halloween _is_ supposed to be their thing. They always spend Halloween together. Even when the Party started going their separate ways every other year or so, Mike and Will always had plans together. Ever since that one Halloween in particular, sitting in the Wheelers’ basement with candy strewn over the table in front of them, matching in beige coveralls. Wasn’t that their agreement? _Together_ ? Crazy _together_? 

He paces a few feet down the porch, then turns around and comes back, deciding he’s not done. “And you know what’s bullshit? You know what’s bullshit? The fact that we’ve known each other for - for -” God, he is a little tipsy. Not only is he ranting to this near-stranger, but he’s having trouble calculating. “Since _kindergarten,_ and here I am being passed up for somebody who makes tuna fish sandwiches on _wheat bread_!”

Theo watches this outburst with what might be a hint of amusement, but he sounds genuine when Will lapses into silence and he makes a face of sympathy. “Sucks, dude.”

“Yeah.” Will settles against the railing again. Anger spent, for the moment. “Sucks.”

A few moments of quiet pass, during which the song inside the house changes to the muffled shuffle beat of a Michael Jackson song. His temper has subsided to brooding, now, and Theo seems to be gauging the waters as he speaks again.

“So, tell me something,” he says, and Will quirks an eyebrow. “What do you think about time travel? Really. Personally, I don’t see any future in it.”

One corner of Will’s mouth curls up. “Really? That was your best one?”

Theo takes the challenge immediately, stubbing out his cigarette and pacing a couple feet closer. “Well, you know, I used to be addicted to time travel. But that’s all in the past now.”

Will, reclined against the porch railing, bounces the heel of one sneaker on the toe of the other. “The barman says, ‘We don’t serve time travelers here.’ A time traveler walks into the bar.”

“The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.”

Will groans, sinking down as if punched in the gut. Theo bows.

“Thank you, thank you.”

He settles against the railing next to Will. Just an _inch_ closer than social expectation would dictate. Before Will can fully process this, Theo reaches out.

“You’re losing your Walkman.”

Casually, he settles the little device more firmly onto Will’s belt, at his hip. Earlier, Will had headphones around his neck to go with it, but they kept getting caught on things and he ended up giving them to Holly for safekeeping before heading to the party.

The Walkman was in no danger of falling. Will knows this. He adjusted it just seconds before exiting the house. Theo doesn’t give a shit about the Walkman; it’s a test. He’s seeing if Will is going to move away.

A conflicting hodgepodge of thoughts flash through Will’s mind all at once.

One: well, that answers whether or not this guy was flirting in theater.

Two: he’s too wound up for this. He can’t handle this. How do normal people flirt without giving themselves stress-migraines every other day?

Three: he has a choice to make. 

Should he move away? One half-step and that’ll be the end of it, he’s sure. People like them - if he’s right about this - can’t afford to take risks on straight guys who cringe away from anything even mildly suggestive of homosexuality. Will could shift his weight away, break eye contact, and that would be it. 

He could. But, should?

The moment is about to pass. He needs to make a decision.

A flare of defiance. Why _shouldn’t_ he? Mike is inside with Emmett, and Will doesn’t particularly feel like trailing around after them all night. And besides, he’s allowed to spend time with whoever he wants. He’s allowed to flirt with whoever he wants.

It’s a novel thought. Enticing. Seductive in its simplicity. 

He’s allowed to flirt if he wants. People flirt. People flirt with people they like. Will is a people. Theo is a people. And, goddamnit, he’s tired of living like this.

He can do this. He’s done it once before, he can do it again.

He can do this.

He’s had enough of cowering in the closet all alone. He could at least have some company every once in a while.

Theo’s arm twitches, like he’s _just_ about to pull back nonchalantly and continue the conversation as if nothing ever happened. But then, instead of pulling away, Will leans in. Just an inch. Something that could be accidental, something easily brushed off if it turns out he misinterpreted this whole thing. But if Theo’s slow smirk is anything to go by, Will’s intuition is right on the money.

* * *

Mike would rather die than admit it out loud, but he’s enjoying the crap out of this makeup.

He had his share of reservations when Emmett first suggested it - in fact, Emmett had to practically drag him into the bathroom, pushing and pleading, plying him with kisses - but now that he’s here... He can’t lie. This is fucking _fun._

The first few minutes at the party were rough. He was uptight and suspicious, hackles raised like a cat, unsure and uncomfortable. But as the night goes on and he realizes he’s not getting any dirty looks or bursting into flame or something, he’s starting to really get into it.

The attention doesn’t hurt. He’s been getting a lot of it - from both genders, he notices. Everyone has something to say about it. Girls who have never spared him a second glance before are slinking up to him in their Bride of Frankenstein or Jem or Elvira costumes, smiling prettily, leaning their elbows on the counter so he can see their breasts swelling against their low-cut necklines. Every so often, a guy will give him an appreciative glance or a thumbs up on the way by -

“Hey, cool costume, man.”

“Not bad, Wheeler.”

“I bet chicks dig the facepaint, yeah?”

And, of course, there’s Emmett, who - thank god - had gotten sidetracked at the snack table chatting with another band geek, and barely noticed how long Mike had been gone. Emmett who keeps a hand on Mike’s shoulder under the guise of keeping track of him. Emmett with his shy smile that’s not quite so shy anymore, emboldened by the energy of the party and his painted mask.

Maybe Mike is a little braver than usual, too, because he realizes he’s been carrying himself differently. His shoulders a bit prouder, perhaps, his head up - and behind his own mask of contoured, ghoulish pigments, he even starts to take little risks. Batting his eyelashes at Emmett playfully, giving coy smiles - the way he’s seen his sister do, one corner of his mouth curling up in a knowing little smirk.

Mike usually hates the way he looks. He has a strange, somewhat ugly face - always has. Sharp and angular in all the wrong ways. He wasn’t likened to an amphibian in middle school for nothing. He usually makes a face at himself in mirrors, turns away or half-covers his face or scowls for pictures - but now?

Now, for once in his life, he feels attractive. Really, truly. He can’t stop smiling. He looks good. He really does. Even Will said so.

Will.

A low-level buzz of worry laps at his insides. He hasn’t seen Will since after they danced.

But then, he did say he needed some air, and it’s only been a few minutes. And Will hates it when people worry over him too much. Especially this time of year.

Mike tries to put it out of his head, laughing as Emmett throws Skittles at him, trying to get one to land in his mouth. One finally hits home and two drunken onlookers punch the air, _woot_ ing.

* * *

“You know, it’s a little hard to take your seriously in that.” Theo nods to Will’s costume. “Don’t get me wrong, you make a good argument. I’m just not exactly intimidated by Marty McFly, here.”

“That so?”

In the past fifteen minutes or so, Will has been mainly successful in his quest to distract himself from his woes. Theo is definitely flirting. No question about it. And Will is definitely flirting back. And it’s terrifying. And exhilarating. Is this what normal people feel like all the time? How do they handle this amount of heady freedom on a daily basis?

“Mm.” Theo nods again, stroking his chin, examining Will’s outfit with feigned seriousness. “Nope. Not intimidating. Cute as a _button_ -” With a playful, lighter-than-air gesture, he taps Will on the nose - “But not intimidating.”

Will is reminded, suddenly and unpleasantly, of Emmett poking Mike on the nose. _You’re a magical fucking creature._ He shakes away the thought. Fuck Emmett. And fuck Mike, for that matter. He doesn’t want to think about them.

“I can be...” His shoulders wiggle as he crosses his arms, staring up at Theo defiantly. “Intimidating.”

He doesn’t feel intimidating. He feels unpracticed and jittery, especially when Theo takes the bait, shifting his stance to lean closer.

“That so?” Theo murmurs, using Will’s own words against him. His eyes flick down, and Will’s heart jumps as he realizes that the other boy is looking at his lips.

For a second, he oscillates. Teeter-tottering between hesitance and eagerness. Part of him wants to, really wants to, but -

_Didn’t you always used to imagine your first kiss with Mike?_

_This isn’t even your first kiss,_ he thinks back at himself, shoving down the little whisper in the back of his mind. _And anyway, fuck Mike. He clearly didn’t want me, and I’m clearly not his type, or he would have asked me instead. I don’t need him._

He’s tired of sitting around moping. If Mike can kiss someone else, so can Will. Just watch. 

It’s this surge of angry, _so-there_ triumph that gives Will the courage to do it. 

One rush of insane courage, one moment of madness. One shift of weight, one hand slipped up into the short waves at the back of Theo’s head, and they’re kissing.

The fake mustache bristles against Will’s nose and upper lip. He’s probably knocking it horribly askew.

That’s the first thing he registers. The first sensation, and the last rational thought.

If there was ever any speck of lingering doubt as to his sexuality, Will isn’t doubting anymore.

Is this why people kiss? Because the feeling of another solid, warm torso pressing against yours is so fundamentally satisfying? Because a blood-hot, saliva-slick mouth working against your own isn’t off-putting at all, but addicting? Is this raw human connection what he’s been denied this whole time?

He can’t quite figure out how to breathe or what to do with his hands, and for a moment he breaks away to gasp in a lungful of air, lips still barely touching Theo’s. He’s the same height as Mike, Will realizes, and it makes this all so horribly easy. Then he’s diving again, unwilling to give this up just yet, this new indulgence, this bewitching, adrenaline-sparkling thrill, and Theo takes it in stride. Pushing back, taking control again by turning to press Will into the side of the house, but Will doesn’t mind. Something about this feels like revenge, sweet and metallic as blood in his mouth, and he wants to swallow every drop.

* * *

Where’s Will?

He’s still MIA. He didn’t leave, did he? He wouldn’t walk home by himself, not tonight. Would he?

Mike is beginning to feel a little off-kilter, and as for Emmett... Well, Emmett just chugged a cup of something and then promptly threw up chunks of candy in the kitchen sink.

It’s time to go home.

He manages to wrestle Emmett into the back seat of his car, the whole time scanning the front yard for a familiar orange vest and head of auburn-brown hair. Nada. People are dotted here and there out front, one sweaty Robocop sans helmet upchucking into a bush, couples stumbling and pawing at each other, but no Will. Mike already swept the house, and he’s not out front - where else would he be?

“I’m gonna go find Will,” Mike tells his giggly boyfriend.

“Okie dokie, Cap’n,” Emmett agrees, relaxed and amiable now that he’s done throwing up.

“You stay here. I’ll be back.”

“Go get ‘im, tiger.”

Mike pauses, taken aback at the phrasing, then shakes his head and shuts the car door. He’s just drunk, that’s all.

One more sweep of the main floor. Calling Will’s name, jumping to see over the crowd of heads. The music is more aggravating than anything, now. If he can’t hear himself yell, how is Will supposed to hear him?

The upper level is a warren of rich-people bedrooms - most occupied. Downstairs is an entertainment center where shy or tired partygoers are watching the old Dracula. No Will. It occurs to Mike, just as his heart rate is really starting to pick up, that he still hasn’t checked out back.

He’s just reaching for the knob when the back door falls open, and a familiar figure slams right into his chest.

“Will, shit. There you are.”

Will stumbles back, gawking, deer-in-the-headlights. He recovers a heartbeat later. “Hey - Mike - I -”

Someone in a white tank top pushes past him through the doorway, mumbling, “‘Scuse me, gentlemen.”

“Emmett’s down for the count,” Mike says, relief palpable in his veins. He hooks an elbow into Will’s so they don’t get jostled apart by the crowd and starts to head towards the front door. “We gotta get him home.”

“Sure.” Will seems foggy, distracted.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.” His cheeks are pink with cold. When he looks up, his expression is something Mike can’t read. He smiles. “Great.”

* * *

Will has a problem.

It’s past midnight, and Will is at home. In bed. Alone.

He rode the wave of giddy inertia all the way from the porch to Mike’s car to his own house, where Mike dropped him off before driving Emmett home to “get him into bed.” Those were Mike’s exact words. _I’m gonna go get him into bed._ And Will had been just punch-drunk enough, still flying high on his act of terrifying, stupid courage, that he almost responded, _yeah, I bet you are._ But he didn’t.

He closed the front door behind him, and he tiptoed past his mother - asleep on the couch next to an empty candy bowl, waiting for him - and he went to his room. He stripped off his costume, one piece at a time. Walkman, sunglasses, sneakers, vest, jacket, suspenders, overshirt, jeans, undershirt. He was still grinning to himself as he brushed his teeth and got into bed. But lying there, alone again - that’s where it all collapsed. House of cards. Whoosh, gone.

Because it didn’t work.

It didn’t work, and it’s not fair.

Kissing someone else - an undeniably hot and charming guy, at that - was supposed to help. It was supposed to get rid of this hopeless pining for his best friend, not make it worse. But now that he’s had a taste... now that he knows exactly what he’s missing... fuck. He’s aching all over again, worse than ever. 

Fuck Mike. Seriously. Fuck. Him.

 _If Mike can go around kissing someone else, so can I. He clearly didn’t want me and I’m clearly not his type, or he would have asked me instead. I don’t need him._ Except, Will does need him. Except, he _did_ kiss someone else, and now he’s lying in his bed, thinking about his best friend and feeling lonelier than ever.

Except, all he can think about is bolting up out of bed, tearing across town, storming right into Mike’s room, crawling over his half-asleep form and kissing him awake, kissing his mouth, down his jaw, down his throat. Kissing him the way Will knows how to, now. Kissing him until neither of them have to think anymore.

The kicker? Mike probably isn’t even _in_ his own room right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has kind of taken on a life of its own, haha. But hey, who am I to question my muses?  
> Thank you to the-angry-pixie for letting me borrow her OC Theo - if you guys haven't read There's A Starman Waiting In the Sky, go read it!! It's kind of the mirror image to Roll For Strength, and getting to work with her for this little mini-crossover of sorts was so much fun. Love ya Pix!  
> As always, I'd *love* to hear your guys' thoughts!


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